Confederation of African Football chief says Africans unduly accused of corruption
DAKAR (TrustLaw) - Africans on the executive committee of football’s governing body (FIFA) who voted for Qatar’s bid to host the World Cup in 2012 were unduly targeted by accusations of corruption, the chairman of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Issa Hayatou has said.
“Fourteen people voted for the Qatar bid and only the two Africans among the 14 are targeted,” Hayatou was quoted as saying by Le Jour newspaper in Cameroon on Monday.
“So, people consider that the 12 others could vote for Qatar naturally and while the Africans could not vote for them (Qatar) without being corrupt. That is not serious,” he said at a news conference in his native Cameroon.
In May, British parliamentarians from the Culture, Media and Sport committee in the lower house of parliament heard accusations that Hayatou and Jacques Anouma, a fellow member of the FIFA executive committee from Ivory Coast, had accepted bribes to vote for Qatar’s bid to host the World Cup in 2012.
The hearing was based on evidence provided by the Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper based on a ‘whistle-blower’ from the Qatar bid team who later retracted her accusations saying she had created the story as a way to get back at the Qatari bid for terminating her contract.
“Fortunately, the girl who invented this whole thing has retracted. She admitted she lied,” Hayatou said.
Hayatou, who is also a member of the International Olympics Committee (IOC), said corruption existed in all societies in the world but insisted that he had never been involved in the practice.
He said institutions such as FIFA, CAF and the IOC are transparent to the point that any such dealings would easily be made public.
The Cameroonian ,who has faced other allegations of corruption before, said his image had been badly scarred by these accusations and denies any involvement in corruption.
“I have never been corrupted by anyone,” he said.
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