AfricaPress-Tanzania: TANZANIA Football Federation (TFF) has refuted the involvement of its president Wallace Karia in the saga that locked the African governing football body, CAF’s president Ahmad Ahmad in abuse of power and mishandling funds.
Ahmad has been slapped a five-year suspension from all football activities by Fifa.
And bolding the statement, TFF’s Information Officer, Clifford Ndimbo has said that the federation strongly refutes the circulating misinformation and it will not hesitate to take legal measures against those who will continue to do that.
FIFA on Monday barred the top official in African soccer from the sport for five years, upending the leadership of one of its six regional confederations only months before a presidential election and offering a new reminder that corruption continues to plague global soccer even at its most senior levels.
The punishment of the official, Ahmad Ahmad, who had been the president of the Confederation of African Football and a FIFA vice president since 2017, was related to his conduct from 2017 to 2019, according to a statement released by FIFA’s ethics body.
Ahmad was found guilty of breaching four separate articles of the organisation’s ethics code, its statement said, including abuse of office, misappropriation of funds and rules concerning the offering and acceptance of gifts.
“We clarified this matter since 2017 when was raised up for the first time since CAF decided to disburse USD 100,000 to all of its affiliate members including Tanzania,” “Part of the money, USD 80,000 was decided by CAF to go to football development in every affiliate federation while the rest 20,000 was principally decided (by the governing African football body) to go to every federation’s president because they do not receive salaries and their posts were just on voluntary basis,” said Ndimbo.
However, he said that after TFF receiving the whole cash, TTF president, Wallace Karia had directed that his portion (USD 20,000) be channeled to other federation’s activities since TFF was facing sponsorship constraints. ‘He (Karia) has never received the money nor be channeled to his personal account,” said Ndimbo.
The decision was announced more than a year after FIFA received complaints of wrongdoing by Ahmad, and 17 months after he was arrested and questioned by French investigators about corruption allegations related to an apparel contract.
In its statement, FIFA said part of its investigation into Ahmad’s conduct in office was linked to that deal. Ethics investigators also looked into the financing of a pilgrimage trip for a number of African officials to the Saudi Arabian holy city of Mecca.
