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Why FIFA Banned CAF President

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Last month, FIFA banned Confederation of African Football (CAF) President Ahmad, for five years after ruling that he had breached various codes of ethics. Reasons for the FIFA Vice-President’s sanction and why a second FIFA investigation is already under way have come to light.
Just minutes after being re-elected FIFA president for a second term in Paris in June 2019, Gianni Infantino made a triumphant declaration before the world’s assembled football leaders.
“Nobody talks about crisis at FIFA any more,” he said, referring to how FIFA’s corruption scan-dal had dominated when he took charge in 2016.
“Nobody talks about scandals or corruption. We talk about football [FIFA] is now synonymous with transparency and integrity.”
But even as he spoke, serious accusations had already surfaced against one of FIFA’s vice-presidents, albeit not in relation to his role with world football’s governing body.
That Vice-President was Ahmad, the head of African football’s ruling body CAF.
Only a day was needed for the comments to come back to haunt Infantino.
Twenty-four hours later, Ahmad was being  questioned by anti-corruption authorities in the French capital “as part of a probe into corruption, breach of trust and forgery.”
The 60-year-old from Madagascar has always denied any wrongdoing.
But on 23 November, 20 months on from a complaint being raised by former CAF secretary general Amr Fahmy, the CAF president was banned and fined $220,000 by FIFA.
FIFA, which had worked alongside CAF in its Egyptian headquarters between August 2019 and February 2020 in a bid to improve governance , had adjudged Ahmad to have broken various codes of its ethics. These included abuse of position; misappropriation of funds; and offering gifts.
Ahmad has since said he will appeal to sport’s highest legal body, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, labelling FIFA’s decision “incomprehensible and shocking” and saying it had been made with “haste” , in order, he contended , to prevent him from being “re-elected to the presidency of CAF.”
Nonetheless, Ahmad had asked FIFA if it could wrap up his ethics case by 12 November, the deadline for presidential candidates to formally declare ahead of March’s elections, which  the Malagasy had been hoping to contest.
Indeed, only six weeks ago, he had received the public backing of 46 of Africa’s 54 football associations.
As a result, this first investigation was narrowed down in a bid to meet the deadline – even if it fell short by nearly two weeks, after Ahmad’s bout of corona-virus delayed matters.
For FIFA’s ethics chamber has made the rare step of splitting its investigation into Ahmad into two parts.
The second of these probes, focusing on an amendment made last year to the billion-dollar media and marketing TV deal CAF made with French company Lagardere in 2015, is already under way.
Explaining last month’s sanctions, FIFA said its investigation into Ahmad “concerned various CAF-related governance issues, including the organisation and financing of an Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca, his involvement in CAF’s dealings with Tactical Steel, and other activities.”
Few further details were given. But following its own investigation, Tidesports source can explain some of the reasons and circumstances that brought down a sitting CAF president for the first time.
These include unexplained payments, questions surrounding potential kick-back arrangements and possible tax evasion, as well as a religious trip that resulted in an unholy mess.
Between 2017 and 2019, FIFA ruled that there were unaccounted payments from CAF to Ahmad’s private bank account. These came to a total of around $230,000.
During the course of two audits conducted by PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PwC) in late 2019 and early 2020 on behalf of FIFA, neither Ahmad, nor CAF itself, could account for the nature of the payments, a source who has seen the FIFA ethics report explained.
Neither Ahmad nor CAF made any comment when contacted by our source.
The payments are not believed to be related to his salary of $40,000 per month, nor the $80,000 he received in bonuses every year.
A key tenet of Ahmad’s presidential campaign in 2017 was his stated desire for financial transparency, with his manifesto claiming that all contracts signed by CAF would be officially published.
“Nothing will be hidden or covered during my mandate,” Ahmad’s manifesto had proclaimed.
But this did not materialise, to the point where annual financial reports, which could be found on CAF’s website in the final years of the three-decade reign of Ahmad’s predecessor Issa Hayatou, have not been published online.
A further lack of financial transparency came during CAF’s dealings with a French company, called Tactical Steel, that specialises in manufacturing gym equipment but which became a key supplier to FIFA’s second largest confederation in late 2017.
In October 2018, a company called ES Pro Consulting Limited sent a bill to CAF for $738,670.
This was in relation to shipping costs involved in the distribution of 60,000 footballs to Africa.
A month later, in November 2018, CAF transferred its payment to a bank account nominated by ES Pro Consulting Limited.
There was, though, one fundamental issue. ES Pro Consulting Limited did not exist in 2018.
Records show that the company, based in the United Arab Emirates, was only incorporated nine months later, in July 2019. So how could a company that did not exist be sending invoices?
What was also of note was that a Dubai-based company was invoicing for a business deal agreed between CAF and Tactical Steel, a once-obscure gym manufacturer located in Toulon in southern France.
The deal related to an order made by Ahmad for the delivery of 60,000 footballs, with one thousand going to every one of Africa’s 54 member associations.
This order was never discussed by CAF’s decision-making Executive Committee (ExCo), BBC Sport Africa understands, nor was it cheap, amounting to $2.5 million in total, of which $1.77m was for the footballs with the rest for shipping.
This deal was mentioned as early as 9 February 2018 in an email from CAF’s then deputy general secretary, who said the order was ‘on the instruction of the president’, to Tactical Steel owner Romuald Seillier.
Seillier is an old friend of Ahmad’s former attaché Loic Gerand, who has twice been declared bankrupt in France where he is currently serving a 15-year ban from running a company.
The pair, both of whom have had offices on the same road in Toulon – served for five years together in the French army, BBC Sport Africa understands.
In March 2018, a month after CAF’s email discussing the balls deal, Seillier set up ES Pro Consulting in his home town of Toulon, along with a former rugby player called Laurent Emmanuelli.
Over a year later, the pair also established ES Pro Consulting Limited (emphasis added) in a free zone, which offers tax concessions and customs duty benefits to expatriate investors, in Dubai.
When it came to making payment for the footballs, both ES Pro Consulting companies and Tactical Steel all received money, a significant chunk of which was sent back to CAF with different instructions.
Even though Tactical Steel had been paid half the costs for the balls ($885,060) and shipping ($369,335) in May 2018, invoices for the full order ($2.5 million) came, on the same day in October 2018, from ES Pro Consulting (France) for the balls and ES Pro Consulting Limited (Dubai) for the shipping.
“Why issue the balls invoice and the shipping invoice from different entities?” CAF’s then finance director Mohamed El Sherei asked FIFA as he also sent them a dossier of evidence prior to Infantino’s speech. “Why transfer the money to two different bank accounts for one same operation?”
Days after receiving the invoices, CAF transferred its outstanding dues, totalling $1.25 million, to Tactical Steel themselves but this money was returned in November, stating “this account is not the destined account” and asking for the funds to be sent to banks nominated by both ES Pro Consulting’s instead.
In early November, $1.25m was paid to ES Pro Consulting Limited in Dubai who then returned the funds relating to the footballs ($885,060) a month later. In late December, CAF then transferred $889,412 to ES Pro Consulting in France, so ending a confusing merry-go-round of transactions.
By the time it had all shaken out, both ES Pro Consulting companies and Tactical Steel had received in excess of $4.6 million for the balls deal – $2.1 million of which had been sent back to CAF with different instructions as to where the money should be sent.
“The refunds from Tactical Steel and ES Pro Consulting … are highly suspicious which could potentially indicate a kick-back arrangement between parties involved or a case of tax evasion through off-shore payments,” PwC said in their audit dated November 2019.
Edwards is a football analyst.

Caf’s dealings with Tactical Steel raised other questions.
These originated after Fahmy informed Fifa of Caf’s decision, taken in December 2017, to cancel an order with sportswear company Puma worth just under $250,000 – which came with a 60% discount – to take up a slightly larger one with Tactical Steel.
The order may have increased from 22,000 items to 35,000, with a demand for Caf branding also added, but the bill of $1,015,313 was disproportionately higher – over four times as big – and excluded shipping (unlike Puma’s).
The costs related to shipping and packaging added at least $225,000 to the Tactical Steel deal, on top of the original equipment quote of just over $1m.

To put this into context, Caf’s previous sportswear equipment deal – which had expired a few months before Ahmad was elected president in March 2017, had seen the African body receive, rather than spend, money, with Adidas agreeing a deal from 2008-2016 that paid Caf at least $13m.
In December 2017, a series of Caf emails indicated that Ahmad was across both the Puma cancellation and the Tactical Steel order as Caf tried to secure kit for the next month’s African Nations Championship (Chan) in Morocco.
§ 18 December: Caf’s then deputy general secretary notifies secretary general Fahmy of the Puma order’s cancellation – upon ‘the president’s request’.
§ 19 December: Caf’s then financial director thanks Seillier, copying in Ahmad’s private email, for Tactical Steel’s quote – “which has been approved by the President of Caf.”
Nonetheless, Ahmad told the media last year that any accusations of his involvement in cancelling the Puma deal and approving the Tactical Steel one were ‘totally false, malicious and defamatory’ – blaming the allegations on a vendetta on the part of Fahmy, who died of cancer earlier this year.
Between December 2017 and January 2019, Caf made net payments totalling some $4.4m to Tactical Steel, with deals having also been arranged for the 2018 Beach Soccer tournament and the 2018 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
The investigation by French anti-corruption authorities, whose assistance Fifa has sought in the past, into the matter is ongoing.
Umrah trip
In February 2018, the Union of Arab Football Associations (UAFA) invited Ahmad and Africa’s FA presidents to undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca called the Umrah – which can take place at any time of the year (unlike the Hajj).
Despite the invitation by the UAFA, internal Caf emails state that the trip to Saudi Arabia was a “personalised invitation” by Ahmad himself to the Muslim presidents of Africa’s football associations.
After 15 such presidents joined Ahmad, his attaché Gerand and another presidential advisor on the May 2018 trip, the question remained at Caf as to who was to settle the bill of just over $100,000.
When then finance director El Sherei asked Caf’s compliance director in July, in an email entitled “Omra Trip expenses”, who would pay for accommodation and travel relating to the trip, the response was not what he expected.
In his own reply, the compliance director , Abdoulah Moustapha , retitled the email, crossing out Omra Trip expenses and replacing it with “Mission: Meeting request at Caf HQ in Cairo”.
He then wrote that Caf would “take charge of accommodations and travel” to and from Cairo from the presidents’ respective home nations while the person who gave the order – i.e. Ahmad, would cover the Egypt-Saudi Arabia return legs owing to the “private” nature of the trip.
“This is not a matter of compliance but purely of payment,” Mustapha added.
“What is the role of compliance?” El Sherei told our source. “It’s to make regulation and supervise working and implementing regulations, not giving approval of payment to a finance director or general secretary or similar.
“On the next visit of the Caf President, he was furious with me. How could I ask this question (regarding payment for the trip)?”
Mustapha said he was unable to give any comment to our source at this time given Ahmad’s appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
In the end, Caf paid just over $90,000 for a trip that cost $101,314, with Ahmad himself contributing the remaining $10,000, but no more.
As the trip was religious in nature and not football-related, Fifa deemed it a misuse of funds as well as an offering of gifts.
In July 2019, a few weeks after joining Fahmy in making allegations of corruption within Caf to Fifa, El Sherei, who had worked for Caf since 1999, was dismissed by the organization, just as Fahmy himself had been, less than a fortnight after his email to Fifa’s ethics chamber.
As stated, Ahmad is appealing his ban.
He faces a race against time and several legal hurdles if he is to stand for re-election next March, but the possibility remains that he could face another sanction if Fifa’s second investigation finds against him.
It is unclear whether the fact that Ahmad received two sets of expenses, as he claimed to be in two different countries (Russia and Egypt) for the same nine-day period during the 2018 World Cup, forms part of this second investigation.
What is known is that the former Madagascar FA president is also being investigated about his role in a decision by Caf to amend a billion-dollar TV contract, signed in 2015, early last year.
Fifa is keen to understand why Caf apparently agreed to buy around $20m of debt owed by a Beninois sports agency called LC2 GROUP to Lagardere Sports, the French company that had been handling Caf’s marketing and media sales until the contract was abruptly cancelled last year.

Under an amendment, signed in early 2019, to the original 2015 deal between Lagardere and Caf, the latter agreed to pay Lagardere $6.7m for the debt, all of which relates to outstanding TV rights payments, owed by LC2 GROUP.
This latest Fifa investigation is not only probing Ahmad’s part in the LC2 GROUP decision but also that of the Malagasy’s stand-in as president, DR Congo’s Constant Omari, Caf’s first vice-president who headed up the delegation dealing with Lagardere.
Neither Ahmad, Omari, Caf nor Lagardere responded to questions when contacted by our source.
Given Fifa’s second investigation, the turmoil shows no signs of abating for Caf whose winner of March’s presidential elections will face a mountainous task in terms of restoring both trust and credibility in the organisation.
.Morgan writes for BBC Sport

banned Confederation of African Football (Caf) president Ahmad for five years after ruling that he had breached various codes of ethics. Reasons for the Fifa vice-president’s sanction and why a second Fifa investigation is already under way have come to light.
Just minutes after being re-elected Fifa president for a second term in Paris in June 2019, Gianni Infantino made a triumphant declaration before the world’s assembled football leaders.
“Nobody talks about crisis at Fifa any more,” he said, referring to how Fifa’s corruption scandal had dominated when he took charge in 2016.
“Nobody talks about scandals or corruption. We talk about football… [Fifa] is now synonymous with transparency and integrity.”
But even as he spoke, serious accusations had already surfaced against one of Fifa’s vice-presidents, albeit not in relation to his role with world football’s governing body.
That vice-president was Ahmad, the head of African football’s ruling body Caf.
Only a day was needed for the comments to come back to haunt Infantino.
Twenty-four hours later, Ahmad was being questioned by anti-corruption authorities in the French capital “as part of a probe into corruption, breach of trust and forgery.”
The 60-year-old from Madagascar has always denied any wrongdoing.
But on 23 November, 20 months on from a complaint being raised by former Caf secretary general Amr Fahmy, the Caf president was banned and fined $220,000 by Fifa.
Fifa – which had worked alongside Caf in its Egyptian headquarters between August 2019 and February 2020 in a bid to improve governance , had adjudged Ahmad to have broken various codes of its ethics. These included abuse of position; misappropriation of funds; and offering gifts.
Ahmad has since said he will appeal to sport’s highest legal body, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, labelling Fifa’s decision “incomprehensible and shocking” and saying it had been made with “haste” , in order, he contended , to prevent him from being “re-elected to the presidency of Caf.”
Nonetheless, Ahmad had asked Fifa if it could wrap up his ethics case by 12 November, the deadline for presidential candidates to formally declare ahead of March’s elections, which the Malagasy had been hoping to contest.
Indeed, only six weeks ago, he had received the public backing of 46 of Africa’s 54 football associations.
As a result, this first investigation was narrowed down in a bid to meet the deadline – even if it fell short by nearly two weeks, after Ahmad’s bout of coronavirus delayed matters.
For Fifa’s ethics chamber has made the rare step of splitting its investigation into Ahmad into two parts.
The second of these probes – focusing on an amendment made last year to the billion-dollar media and marketing TV deal Caf made with French company Lagardere in 2015, is already under way.
Explaining last month’s sanctions, Fifa said its investigation into Ahmad “concerned various Caf-related governance issues, including the organisation and financing of an Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca, his involvement in Caf’s dealings with Tactical Steel, and other activities.”
Few further details were given. But following its own investigation, Tidesports source can explain some of the reasons and circumstances that brought down a sitting Caf president for the first time.
These include unexplained payments, questions surrounding potential kick-back arrangements and possible tax evasion, as well as a religious trip that resulted in an unholy mess.
Between 2017 and 2019, Fifa ruled that there were unaccounted payments from Caf to Ahmad’s private bank account. These came to a total of around $230,000.
During the course of two audits conducted by PriceWaterhouse Coopers (PwC) in late 2019 and early 2020 on behalf of Fifa, neither Ahmad, nor Caf itself, could account for the nature of the payments, a source who has seen the Fifa ethics report explained.
Neither Ahmad nor Caf made any comment when contacted by our source.
The payments are not believed to be related to his salary of $40,000 per month, nor the $80,000 he received in bonuses every year.
A key tenet of Ahmad’s presidential campaign in 2017 was his stated desire for financial transparency, with his manifesto claiming that all contracts signed by Caf would be officially published.
“Nothing will be hidden or covered during my mandate,” Ahmad’s manifesto had proclaimed.
But this did not materialize, to the point where annual financial reports, which could be found on Caf’s website in the final years of the three-decade reign of Ahmad’s predecessor Issa Hayatou, have not been published online.
A further lack of financial transparency came during Caf’s dealings with a French company, called Tactical Steel, that specialises in manufacturing gym equipment but which became a key supplier to Fifa’s second largest confederation in late 2017.
In October 2018, a company called ES Pro Consulting Limited sent a bill to Caf for $738,670.
This was in relation to shipping costs involved in the distribution of 60,000 footballs to Africa.
A month later, in November 2018, Caf transferred its payment to a bank account nominated by ES Pro Consulting Limited.
There was, though, one fundamental issue. ES Pro Consulting Limited did not exist in 2018.
Records show that the company, based in the United Arab Emirates, was only incorporated nine months later, in July 2019. So how could a company that did not exist be sending invoices?
What was also of note was that a Dubai-based company was invoicing for a business deal agreed between Caf and Tactical Steel, a once-obscure gym manufacturer located in Toulon in southern France.
The deal related to an order made by Ahmad for the delivery of 60,000 footballs, with one thousand going to every one of Africa’s 54 member associations.
This order was never discussed by Caf’s decision-making Executive Committee (ExCo), BBC Sport Africa understands, nor was it cheap – amounting to $2.5m in total, of which $1.77m was for the footballs with the rest for shipping.
This deal was mentioned as early as 9 February 2018 in an email from Caf’s then deputy general secretary, who said the order was ‘on the instruction of the president’, to Tactical Steel owner Romuald Seillier.
Seillier is an old friend of Ahmad’s former attaché Loic Gerand, who has twice been declared bankrupt in France where he is currently serving a 15-year ban from running a company.
The pair – both of whom have had offices on the same road in Toulon – served for five years together in the French army, BBC Sport Africa understands.
In March 2018, a month after Caf’s email discussing the balls deal, Seillier set up ES Pro Consulting in his home town of Toulon, along with a former rugby player called Laurent Emmanuelli.
Over a year later, the pair also established ES Pro Consulting Limited (emphasis added) in a free zone, which offers tax concessions and customs duty benefits to expatriate investors, in Dubai.
When it came to making payment for the footballs, both ES Pro Consulting companies and Tactical Steel all received money, a significant chunk of which was sent back to Caf with different instructions.
Even though Tactical Steel had been paid half the costs for the balls ($885,060) and shipping ($369,335) in May 2018, invoices for the full order ($2.5m) came – on the same day in October 2018 – from ES Pro Consulting (France) for the balls and ES Pro Consulting Limited (Dubai) for the shipping.
“Why issue the balls invoice and the shipping invoice from different entities?” Caf’s then finance director Mohamed El Sherei asked Fifa as he also sent them a dossier of evidence prior to Infantino’s speech. “Why transfer the money to two different bank accounts for one same operation?”
Days after receiving the invoices, Caf transferred its outstanding dues, totalling $1.25m – to Tactical Steel themselves but this money was returned in November, stating “this account is not the destined account” and asking for the funds to be sent to banks nominated by both ES Pro Consulting’s instead.
In early November, $1.25m was paid to ES Pro Consulting Limited in Dubai who then returned the funds relating to the footballs ($885,060) a month later. In late December, Caf then transferred $889,412 to ES Pro Consulting in France, so ending a confusing merry-go-round of transactions.
By the time it had all shaken out, both ES Pro Consulting companies and Tactical Steel had received in excess of $4.6m for the balls deal – $2.1m of which had been sent back to Caf with different instructions as to where the money should be sent.
“The refunds from Tactical Steel and ES Pro Consulting … are highly suspicious which could potentially indicate a kick-back arrangement between parties involved or a case of tax evasion through off-shore payments,” PwC said in their audit dated November 2019.
Caf’s dealings with Tactical Steel raised other questions.
These originated after Fahmy informed Fifa of Caf’s decision, taken in December 2017, to cancel an order with sportswear company Puma worth just under $250,000 – which came with a 60% discount – to take up a slightly larger one with Tactical Steel.
The order may have increased from 22,000 items to 35,000, with a demand for Caf branding also added, but the bill of $1,015,313 was disproportionately higher – over four times as big – and excluded shipping (unlike Puma’s).
The costs related to shipping and packaging added at least $225,000 to the Tactical Steel deal, on top of the original equipment quote of just over $1m.

To put this into context, Caf’s previous sportswear equipment deal – which had expired a few months before Ahmad was elected president in March 2017, had seen the African body receive, rather than spend, money, with Adidas agreeing a deal from 2008-2016 that paid Caf at least $13m.
In December 2017, a series of Caf emails indicated that Ahmad was across both the Puma cancellation and the Tactical Steel order as Caf tried to secure kit for the next month’s African Nations Championship (Chan) in Morocco.
§ 18 December: Caf’s then deputy general secretary notifies secretary general Fahmy of the Puma order’s cancellation – upon ‘the president’s request’.
§ 19 December: Caf’s then financial director thanks Seillier, copying in Ahmad’s private email, for Tactical Steel’s quote – “which has been approved by the President of Caf.”
Nonetheless, Ahmad told the media last year that any accusations of his involvement in cancelling the Puma deal and approving the Tactical Steel one were ‘totally false, malicious and defamatory’ – blaming the allegations on a vendetta on the part of Fahmy, who died of cancer earlier this year.
Between December 2017 and January 2019, Caf made net payments totalling some $4.4m to Tactical Steel, with deals having also been arranged for the 2018 Beach Soccer tournament and the 2018 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
The investigation by French anti-corruption authorities, whose assistance Fifa has sought in the past, into the matter is ongoing.
Umrah trip
In February 2018, the Union of Arab Football Associations (UAFA) invited Ahmad and Africa’s FA presidents to undertake a pilgrimage to Mecca called the Umrah – which can take place at any time of the year (unlike the Hajj).
Despite the invitation by the UAFA, internal Caf emails state that the trip to Saudi Arabia was a “personalised invitation” by Ahmad himself to the Muslim presidents of Africa’s football associations.
After 15 such presidents joined Ahmad, his attaché Gerand and another presidential advisor on the May 2018 trip, the question remained at Caf as to who was to settle the bill of just over $100,000.
When then finance director El Sherei asked Caf’s compliance director in July, in an email entitled “Omra Trip expenses”, who would pay for accommodation and travel relating to the trip, the response was not what he expected.
In his own reply, the compliance director , Abdoulah Moustapha , retitled the email, crossing out Omra Trip expenses and replacing it with “Mission: Meeting request at Caf HQ in Cairo”.
He then wrote that Caf would “take charge of accommodations and travel” to and from Cairo from the presidents’ respective home nations while the person who gave the order – i.e. Ahmad, would cover the Egypt-Saudi Arabia return legs owing to the “private” nature of the trip.
“This is not a matter of compliance but purely of payment,” Mustapha added.
“What is the role of compliance?” El Sherei told our source. “It’s to make regulation and supervise working and implementing regulations, not giving approval of payment to a finance director or general secretary or similar.
“On the next visit of the Caf President, he was furious with me. How could I ask this question (regarding payment for the trip)?”
Mustapha said he was unable to give any comment to our source at this time given Ahmad’s appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
In the end, Caf paid just over $90,000 for a trip that cost $101,314, with Ahmad himself contributing the remaining $10,000, but no more.
As the trip was religious in nature and not football-related, Fifa deemed it a misuse of funds as well as an offering of gifts.
In July 2019, a few weeks after joining Fahmy in making allegations of corruption within Caf to Fifa, El Sherei, who had worked for Caf since 1999, was dismissed by the organization, just as Fahmy himself had been, less than a fortnight after his email to Fifa’s ethics chamber.
As stated, Ahmad is appealing his ban.
He faces a race against time and several legal hurdles if he is to stand for re-election next March, but the possibility remains that he could face another sanction if Fifa’s second investigation finds against him.
It is unclear whether the fact that Ahmad received two sets of expenses, as he claimed to be in two different countries (Russia and Egypt) for the same nine-day period during the 2018 World Cup, forms part of this second investigation.
What is known is that the former Madagascar FA president is also being investigated about his role in a decision by Caf to amend a billion-dollar TV contract, signed in 2015, early last year.
Fifa is keen to understand why Caf apparently agreed to buy around $20m of debt owed by a Beninois sports agency called LC2 GROUP to Lagardere Sports, the French company that had been handling Caf’s marketing and media sales until the contract was abruptly cancelled last year.

Under an amendment, signed in early 2019, to the original 2015 deal between Lagardere and Caf, the latter agreed to pay Lagardere $6.7m for the debt, all of which relates to outstanding TV rights payments, owed by LC2 GROUP.
This latest Fifa investigation is not only probing Ahmad’s part in the LC2 GROUP decision but also that of the Malagasy’s stand-in as president, DR Congo’s Constant Omari, Caf’s first vice-president who headed up the delegation dealing with Lagardere.
Neither Ahmad, Omari, Caf nor Lagardere responded to questions when contacted by our source.
Given Fifa’s second investigation, the turmoil shows no signs of abating for Caf whose winner of March’s presidential elections will face a mountainous task in terms of restoring both trust and credibility in the organisation.
.Morgan writes for BBC Sport

 

By: Piers Edwards

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Former Champion Seeks Title Defence At Para Table Tennis Tourney

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Former African champion Faith Ugwueke has expressed her ambitions for the seventh edition of the Valuejet Lagos Para Table Tennis Open which is holding at the Molade Okoya Thomas Sports Hall of the Teslim Balogun Stadium in Surulere.

The 2006 Commonwealth Games silver medallist spoke to Tidesports source her desire to defend her para singles title in the women’s category and to also secure a qualification berth for both the regional West Africa para table tennis event in Abeokuta in September and the continental championship billed to hold in Cairo, Egypt in November.

The multiple Paralympian said, “My expectation is to come out great at this wonderful tournament and to qualify for the forthcoming tournament that is coming up in Nigeria and Egypt in September and November. Last tournament, I won the singles. I won three golds at the last ValueJet tournament. And I want to believe and hope that I will maintain my position by coming in first position.”

Ugwueke had featured in the para event at the 56th Molade Okoya-Thomas National Table Tennis Championships, held at the Teslim Balogun Stadium in January, where she suffered a stunning defeat to eventual finalist and tournament runner-up Taiye Oyinloye, who in turn was beaten 3-1 (11-3, 7-11, 11-6, 11-9) by Commonwealth Games medallist, Kate Oputa, to become the women’s class 1-5 champion.

The ValueJet Lagos Para table tennis Open, which is in its seventh edition, is an event sanctioned by the governing body ITTF Africa and put together by the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation in partnership with Lagos State Sports Commission.

The event will come to a close on July 11, with the competition serving as qualifiers for the country’s players for the regional tournament in Abeokuta.

A total of 98 athletes—57 men and 41 women—from Nigeria, Benin Republic, and Togo are competing in the singles events.

Notable performances have come from Alabi, Agunbiade, Ogunkunle, and Commonwealth Games medallists Kate Oputa and Faith Obazuaye, who have showcased their class against emerging talents across various classifications.

Their presence has intensified the battle for podium finishes, with top seeds asserting dominance in their respective singles events.

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Nigerian Athletes Serving Doping Bans

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The Athletics Integrity Unit continues to take a hard stance against doping violations across the globe, and Nigeria has not been spared. Below are ten Nigerian athletics serving doping ban Imaobong Nse Uko (July 2026)

The AIU announced in the June 2025 sanctions list on July 1 that 21-year-old quarter-miler Uko was found guilty of an anti-doping rule violation committed on June 5 2024. Her infraction falls under whereabouts failures, having missed three tests within a 12-month period.

The AIU confirmed that her period of ineligibility will run until 23 July 2026 and all results recorded from the date of the infraction have been officially disqualified.

Uko rose to fame after clinching three gold medals at the 2021 World U-20 Championships in Nairobi, winning the women’s 400 metres, 4x400m relay, and the mixed 4x400m relay.

Stephen Eloji (June 2028)

Sprinter and hurdler Stephen Eloji tested positive for dehydrochloromethyl-testosterone in an out-of-competition test in Nigeria on May 2, 2024 and has been handed a four-year ban by the AIU.

The 25-year-old was active in the American collegiate circuit, recording strong performances in the 110m hurdles and relay events as recently as April 2024, including at the Pepsi Florida Relays and Music City Challenge.

Ada Princess Bright (September 2027)

Ada Princess Bright is serving a four-year ineligibility period after testing positive for Metenolone during the National Athletics Trials held on July 6 2023 in Benin City.

She had an active season prior to her suspension, competing in national meets in Lagos, Uyo, and Benin, and earning a relay gold at the African U20 Championships in Ndola, Zambia.

Grace Nwokocha (August 2025)

Nwokocha is serving a three-year ban after testing positive for SARMS substances including Ostarine and Ligandrol during the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

The fallout was significant, as Nigeria was stripped of its women’s 4x100m relay gold medal at the Games. Prior to her suspension, she had qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, posted a personal best of 11.00s in the 100m, and reached the semi-finals in the 100m and 200m at the 2022 World Athletics Championships. She is ineligible to compete until 2 August 2025.

Yinka Ajayi (January 2030)

Ajayi, a 400m specialist and one-time Olympic representative, is currently serving an extended eight-year ban for multiple anti-doping violations.

The first sanction, issued after she tested positive for Metenolone in an out-of-competition test in Iowa, USA, led to a four-year ban starting in December 2021. However, further findings of tampering led to an additional four-year penalty in 2024, extending her suspension until January 25 2030.

Glory Okon (January 2026)

Glory Okon is serving a four-year ban for testing positive for Metenolone following an out-of-competition test conducted on December 2 2021 in Nigeria.

She previously won gold in the 400 metres at the 2019 African U-20 Championships in Abidjan and featured prominently at the 2021 National Sports Festival in Benin City.

Blessing Okagbare (July 2031)

Once the face of Nigerian athletics, Okagbare is now serving a 10-year ban following multiple anti-doping rule violations. She tested positive for human growth hormone and EPO in an out-of-competition test in June 2021.

Her suspension came while competing at the Tokyo Olympics and was announced in February 2022. It was later extended by an additional year in June 2022 due to further breaches.

Divine Oduduru (February 2029)

Oduduru’s  career was derailed by anti-doping violations linked to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. On October 12 2023, a Disciplinary Tribunal of the AIU imposed a six-year ban on Oduduru after he was found guilty of possessing and attempting to use prohibited substances and methods. The case stemmed from the wider investigation into Eric Lira, the first individual convicted under the US Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, who supplied banned substances to athletes, including Okagbare, ahead of the Tokyo Games.

Oduduru’s ban is effective from February 9, 2023 and will run until February 8, 2029.

Henry Azike (Lifetime ban)

Azike is one of two Nigerian athletes currently serving a lifetime ban after testing positive for Metenolone, an anabolic steroid. His case was classified as a second ADRV, automatically triggering a lifetime suspension from the sport.

Azike last competed in 2011, including at the Doha Amir Cup and Nigerian Championships in Calabar.

Vivian Chukwuemeka (Lifetime ban)

Two-time Olympian and African shot put record holder Vivian Chukwuemeka is serving a lifetime ban for a second doping offence after testing positive for Stanozolol at the 2012 National Championships in Calabar.

The 2002 Commonwealth Games champion and multiple-time African gold medallist had previously served a two-year ban following a 2009 positive test. Her personal best of 18.43m remains the African record in women’s shot put.

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Eagles B Players Admit Pressure For CHAN Qualification 

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EAGLES B PLAYERS
Pix: Super Eagles B players at the training session. 

Invited players into the Super Eagles B camp ahead of the rescheduled African Nations Championship tournament are feeling the pressure of selection, three days into their training camp at the Remo Stars Stadium in Ikenne, Ogun State.

The eighth CHAN tournament is taking place in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda between August 2 to 20.

Ahead of the tournament, head coach Eric Chelle had invited an initial 35 players to camp and they began training on Monday with 21 players.

Five more players arrived on Tuesday to take the number to 26 while 28 players trained on Wednesday morning with the rest expected before the end of the week.

Captain of the team through the qualifiers, Junior Nduka, spoke about the intensity of the sessions and the jostle to make the final squad.

“Everybody is under pressure but definitely the coaches want the best among the 35 players,” Nduka said.

River United and former Flying Eagles forward, Aniekeme Okon, also admitted the pressure.

“It puts pressure on us, 35 players being invited, everybody is going to give out their best with an expectation of being selected. So we keep pushing.”

Ikorodu City defender, Leonard Ngenge also said, “Obviously, it puts everyone under pressure even myself. But I just need to do my best to be on the coaches’ radar.”

Nigeria, the 2018 runners-up, are in group D of the 19-team tournament, alongside Cup holders Senegal, Sudan and Congo.

The Super Eagles B will play their first two matches of the competition, against Senegal and Sudan, at the Amman Stadium on the island of Zanzibar, before taking on Congo at the Benjamin Mkapa Stadium in Dar es Salaam.

Nigeria has never won the tournament, having finished third at the 2014 edition in South Africa before losing the final against hosts Morocco four years later.

 

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