August 13 – The defence of FIFA president Gianni Infantino by Olli Rehn (pictured), chairman of FIFA’s Covid-19 steering committee, has prompted a sharp response from a former FIFA staffer and a former candidate to represent CAF at the FIFA council.
Zelkifli R Ngoufonja (better know in the football world as Zul) was in charge of overseeing
FIFA development programmes in Africa until April 2017 when he resigned to seek a position on the
FIFA Council as one of the elected CAF representatives. At FIFA he was one of the development staff responsible for creating the FIFA Forward programme.
Zul takes Rehn to task over whether the address to the Finns was the right forum to build the case for Infantino’s defense, but more pertinently over his lack of knowledge of how governance is carried out in FIFA’s name in confederations and national associations around the world – Rehn is deputy chairman of FIFA’s Governance Committee.
Zul draws on his own experience as a candidate in the CAF election and how FIFA attempted to block him while “my opponent from Egypt invited over 35 voting football associations presidents to Egypt 4 days before the elections under the pretence of celebrating incoming CAF president Ahmad AHMAD victory, and lavished those delegates with tours, dinners, and numerous gifts and the best of the best: a trip from Egypt to the voting location Bahrain on a private jet for a FIFA congress.
He also reminds Rehn of the official complaints were raised to FIFA Ethics Committee by CAF employees including “sexual harassment, mismanagement of funds, double per diem payment
to all CAF executives (but one) attending FIFA’s events and more.” And references the arrest of CAF president Ahmad in Paris in June 2019.
He further outlines the woes of the African confederation’s loss of sovereignty with FIFA’s installation of Fatma Samoura as its delegate for Africa to run the body, and the political silencing of African critics and the culture of fear that created. Compounding this, Zul references the PWC audit of CAF finances that found numerous discrepancies and suggestions of misappropriation of funds under Ahmad’s leadership.
From a governance perspective – the committee of which Rehn sits as deputy chair – all has been covered up.
“Mr. deputy chairman of the governance committee are we saying that different rules apply to different individuals at FIFA? And that when investigations are targeting Gianni Infantino the FIFA president, he gets carte blanche because he is the president? I would agree with you that “FIFA today is a very different organisation compared to that of five years ago” because a situation like this would not have happened with the FIFA true independent committees that suspended then banned former FIFA president Sepp Blatter and former UEFA president Michel Platini. Today we are at a FIFA that serve the president and has independent committees’ members publicly taking his defence. I would expect such behaviour from the cohort of people Gianni Infantino brought from Nyon, but not from a member of the independent committee,” says Zul.
He concludes by returning to question Rehn’s defence of Infantino saying “…let us allow the Swiss justice system to do his job while independent bodies at FIFA are busy defending the president instead of protecting the organization they were appointed to serve.”
See the full letter here.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1714163968labto1714163968ofdlr1714163968owedi1714163968sni@n1714163968osloh1714163968cin.l1714163968uap1714163968