Scandal-tainted Oceania football hit with yet another ban

WELLINGTON

Fifa has slapped a three-month ban on a top Oceania Football Confederation official, undermining the scandal-hit organisation's insistence it has cleaned up its act.

World football's governing body revealed Thursday that it had suspended OFC vice-president Lee Harmon after an investigation into the resale of tickets at last year's World Cup in Russia.

It said Harmon, who is a member of the powerful Fifa Council and head of the Cook Islands Football Association, would also pay a fine of 20,000 Swiss francs ($19,800, Sh2 million).

Fifa did not reveal further details of Harmon's offences but said his punishment had been determined after a plea bargain.

It comes after Fifa last week suspended former OFC president David Chung for six years for corruption.

Fifa's Ethics Committee found Chung, who resigned from the OFC last April, "offered and accepted gifts" and "acted under a conflict of interest".

The Papua New Guinea businessman's downfall was reportedly related to an NZ$15 million (US$10 million, Sh100 million) sports hub the OFC was developing in Auckland.
Oceania, the smallest and weakest of Fifa's six continental confederations, is comprised largely of small Pacific island nations.

It has a long history of governance problems, although Chung's successor as president, Lambert Matlock of Vanuatu, said they had been addressed.

"OFC has undergone immense reforms following the resignation of Mr Chung in 2018," he said in a statement issued Friday.

"We believe we are now on the right path to ensuring ethical breaches like those of the former president cannot be repeated."

Chung's predecessor, Reynald Temarii of Tahiti, was forced out in 2010 after being implicated in a vote-selling scandal during an undercover newspaper sting.

In 2017, former Guam FA president Richard Lai, who served on Fifa's auditing body, was barred from football for life after admitting to accepting almost $1 million on kickbacks.

Another ex-OFC president, the late Charlie Dempsey of New Zealand, created an uproar in 2000 during the vote to award the 2006 World Cup.

Dempsey had been instructed by Oceania to vote for South Africa but abstained from the final ballot, effectively handing the 2006 tournament to Germany.
He later said he withdrew after being placed under "intolerable pressure" but never fully explained his actions.

Reports in German media in 2015 alleged Dempsey, who died in 2008, had been paid $250,000 (Sh25 million) on the eve of the vote by a sports marketing firm linked to the German bid.