ZURICH: Saoud Al-Mohannadi, the Qatari official at the centre of the Asian confedration election congress chaos, has been banned by the FIFA ethics committee for one year writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

Al-Mohannadi had wanted to stand for a place on the FIFA Council but the world federation rejected him as an ineligible potential candidate. An extraordinary AFC congress was then cut short – which led to the AFC being unable to send a full quota of delegates to FIFA.

The Qatari football federation vice-president had known of the FIFA ethics investigation into his conduct for some time, raising questions over why he even decided to stand for election.

On August 26 the FIFA ethics committee published the conclusions of an inquiry conducted by deputy chair Djimbaraye Bourngar into the conduct of the former general secretary of the QFA.

Recommendation

Bourngar recommended that ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert ban Al-Mohannadi for “no less than two years and six months and a fine of no less than SFr20,000” for a “failure to properly cooperate and provide truthful information to the investigatory chamber in the framework of another investigation not related to the awarding of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.”

The issue is thought to have stretched back to events surrounding a previous ethics inquiry into another Qatari, the former AFC president Mohamed bin Hammam, who was subsequently the subject of a life ban.

In the event Eckert barred Al-Mohannadi for one year and imposed a fine of CHF 20,000 ($19,928) because he “did not cooperate with the investigatory chamber in the proceedings against a third party” and had infringed two articles of the FIFA code of ethics.

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