February 05, (THEWILL) – Issa Hayatou, the former President of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) from 1988 to 2017, has won his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over FIFA’s one-year suspension.
THEWILL recalls that in June 2021, the Cameroonian official, who had previously served as Acting President of FIFA, was found guilty of violating FIFA’s Code of Ethics’ article 15.
This followed an examination by the Ethics Committee into a deal between the CAF and marketing firm Lagardère Sports over media and marketing rights for CAF competitions.
Hayatou was accused to have broken his duty of allegiance by entering into an anti-competitive deal that cost CAF money and damaged his reputation, according to the FIFA Ethics Committee. But, last August, the 75-year-old filed an appeal with the CAS.
In December, a panel led by former professional footballer Manfred Nan of the Netherlands held a hearing and voted to overturn FIFA’s judgement.
Hayatou’s year-long ban and CHF30,000 (£24,000/$32,000/€28,000) penalties from football’s world governing body have now been overturned by CAS. The sports arbitration body ruled: “As the CAS Panel has upheld the appeal, the Challenged Decision is set aside and no sanction is to be imposed on Issa Hayatou.
“Following its deliberations, the Panel found that there was insufficient evidence to establish a violation of Article 15 para. 1 of the FIFA Code of Ethics which would justify the sanctions imposed on Issa Hayatou by the FIFA instance.
“As a consequence, the CAS Panel upheld the appeal and set aside the Challenged Decision.”
CAF allegedly lost hundreds of millions of dollars by extending its contract with Lagardère without properly evaluating alternatives or even conducting an open competition process, according to FIFA.
The world football governing body held that the multi-million-dollar arrangement negotiated with Lagardère in 2016 that binds CAF to the corporation for 20 years was worth $200 million (£148 million/€174 million) less than the CAF estimate.
FIFA said that the contract extension, and Hayatou’s role in it, had “caused significant damage” to CAF. Therefore, in 2018, the Egyptian Economic Court ordered Hayatou and his former secretary general, Hicham El Amrani, to pay $27.9 million (£20.6 million/€24.3 million) in relation to the contract.
Following the FIFA ruling, Hayatou’s legal counsel argued that the “investigation was selective and biased, collecting only evidence to the detriment of the accused, not being conducted in an independent manner and not respecting the presumption of innocence”.
The deal with Lagardère Sports was “entered into with the full knowledge of the members of the CAF Executive Committee” according to Hayatou’s defence, and it is “unthinkable that the CAF President would have acted alone.”
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
