Bin Hammam faces life ban over bribe claim

SKY – ZURICH, Mohamed bin Hammam is facing a potential life ban from football when he goes before Fifa’s ethics committee later on Friday.

The 62-year-old senior Fifa member – suspended since May 29 – denies attempting to bribe officials of the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) to vote for him in last month’s presidential election.

The Asian Football Confederation president and his lawyers are determined to give “convincing grounds” of his innocence.

Leaked details suggest “compelling circumstantial evidence” has been compiled for the ethics team against Mr bin Hammam.

But the Qatari argues that he is the victim of “clear attempts to besmirch my name in the public domain”.

“There can be no doubt that there has been a campaign waged within certain quarters to ensure that I am seen to be guilty and eliminated from football in the court of public opinion, even before my hearing has started,” said Mr bin Hammam.

“The leaking of confidential information by individuals to the media, before the entire story had been told in a manner that is fair to all sides, was done for their own purposes and personal agendas.”

The evidence collected relates to a meeting specially-convened by Mr bin Hammam and the former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner on May 10 in Trinidad in the run-up to the presidential election.

The central accusation is that Mr bin Hammam left gifts of $40,000 (£24,000) for CFU member associations in exchange for their votes.

However, it is understood there is no direct evidence linking Mr bin Hammam to the money.

It has been reported that he has refused to release bank details to investigators, except for one that shows he wired $363,557.98 on April 28.

He says the money was to pay the hotel and travel expenses of the delegates who were attending the meeting in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Fifa has swept aside allegations of corruption levelled at the organisation by the former 2018 England bid team chairman Lord Triesman.

And that has been followed by a whistleblower now saying that she lied to The Sunday Times when she said two Fifa members had taken money to vote for the successful Qatar 2022 World Cup bid.

Fifa, which in the end controversially re-elected its president Sepp Blatter unopposed, still has much to do to improve its image as football’s world governing body.

A ban for Mr bin Hammam would be sure to raise further questions about the process by which Qatar won the right to stage the 2022 World Cup.