Omari’s FIFA bid fails but Zetchi, Souare and Njoya cleared ahead of CAF election

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The Stand-in (CAF) president Constant Omari has been barred from standing for the Fifa Council, where he already has a position, in Friday’s elections in Morocco.

Omari, FIFA Council member since 2015 has been a subject of an ongoing Fifa ethics inquiry relating to a decision to amend the billion-dollar Lagardere TV contract.

However, he had appealed his rejection for the post by Fifa’s Review Committee on 26 January at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas), who ruled against him on Thursday.

Fifa is investigating why CAF agreed to purchase around $20m of debt owed by a Beninois sports agency called LC2 GROUP to Lagardere Sports, the French company that had been handling the marketing and media sales of CAF until the contract was terminated in late 2019.

CAF had agreed to pay Lagardere $6.7m for the debt, which relates to outstanding TV rights payments, owed by LC2 GROUP in the amendment signed in early 2019 to the original 2015 deal.

Omari is not the only one under probe the outgoing Caf president Ahmad – whose Fifa ban for various ethics breaches was reduced to two years this week – is also being probed on this matter.

Guinea’s Antonio Souare and Cameroonian Seidou Mbombo Njoya are now both cleared by CAS to contest for positions on Caf’s Executive Committee.

They were both rejected by Caf’s Governance Committee earlier this year.

CAS has since Monday been busy ahead of CAF election with cases relating to the election, where South Africa’s Patrice Motsepe will be voted in and announced as the new president- unopposed – on Friday.

Motsepe’s rivals withdrew their candidacy last week and decided to give full support to Motsepe.

And following Cas’ decision on Monday to maintain a FIFA ban on Madagascar’s Ahmad – albeit while reducing his sentence – now further confirmed Motsepe as the next CAF president.

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