Qatar’s Mohamed Bin Hammam, former president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), has been suspended by the organisation for 30 days following allegations of “financial wrongdoing,” it was announced on Tuesday.
Bin Hammam, who challenged Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency last year but withdrew after allegations of bribery and is currently fighting a life ban by football’s world governing body, was suspended following an internal audit by the AFC.
The Asian football governing body said Bin Hammam had been suspended for “events surrounding the negotiation and execution of certain contracts and with the financial transactions made in and out of AFC bank accounts and his personal account during the tenure of Mr Bin Hammam’s presidency”.
While it did not elaborate, an AFC statement said the case has been referred to its disciplinary committee and a verdict is expected in a few days.
Bin Hammam was elected AFC president in 2002, but has fallen from grace since being accused of bribery during his bid to secure the presidency of FIFA.
He withdrew his candidacy and was then provisionally suspended days before the June election over allegations that he had tried to buy the votes of Caribbean officials by handing them US$40,000.
Blatter was subsequently re-elected unopposed for a fourth term as FIFA president, while Bin Hammam was found guilty of breaking seven articles of FIFA’s ethics code, including one relating to bribery.
Bin Hammam, who has denied any wrongdoing, was banned for life and subsequently lost an appeal at FIFA.
Bin Hammam and the AFC have suffered strained relations since the FIFA scandal broke.
A former top AFC official attacked him for standing for FIFA presidency and said if he had won it would have been “joke of the century”.
“FIFA will be doomed if Hammam became the president,” Peter Velappan, who was the AFC’s general secretary from 1978 to 2007, was quoted as saying by The Associated Press. “It would be very detrimental.”
Last year, Bin Hammam failed in his bid to block the appointment of his replacement as head of the AFC. His appeal was rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport on September 30 and Chinese official Zhang Jilong was named acting president.
Bin Hammam had claimed Jilong’s appointment as AFC acting president and nomination to FIFA’s decision-making body breached the confederation’s rules. The AFC later claimed it had “strictly followed” its statutes at all times.
* With agencies
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