FIFA Amazingly Backtrack on Hayatou Appointment

FIFA, 25 hours after making the announcement that Issa Hayatou had been appointed the head of the committee for the London 2012 Olympic football tournament, completely denounced the appointment citing technical errors for the miscommunication. 

The FIFA website had even been updated with the president of the Confederation of African Football’s name listed as chairman of the two committees yesterday.

But in an astonishing U-turn, FIFA last night backtracked on the announcement, denying that the controversial African football boss, who has twice faced corruption allegations in the last year, had been awarded the FIFA positions. 

“Due to a technical error, appointments for FIFA standing committees have appeared on the FIFA website,” said the FIFA statement released to media at 19:00 CET on Wednesday.

“The appointments for the chairman and deputy chairman of the FIFA standing committees will be communicated in due course. 

“Therefore, Issa Hayatou has not been appointed as chairman of the organising committee for the Olympic football tournaments.”

The appointments, supposedly signed, sealed and delivered by FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, had attracted heavy criticism as Hayatou, an IOC member from Cameroon, name is still fighting off bribery allegations relating to a BBC Panorama documentary. He is currently the subject of an IOC investigation.

New high-profile jobs for Hayatou hardly fit with Blatter’s pledge to clean-up FIFA “from within” following a disastrous year for the federation which has been rocked by a series of bribery scandals.

As new chairman of the GOAL Bureau, Hayatou would have replaced disgraced Mohamed Bin Hammam, who was handed a lifetime ban by FIFA in July following alleged attempts to bribe Caribbean voters in the FIFA presidential race.

The statement on Hayatou’s FIFA appointments has since been removed from the CAF website.

Hayatou previously chaired FIFA’s Olympics committee from 1992 to 2006. He has been an IOC member since 2001.

He was among three FIFA executives charged with accepting bribes in a BBC Panorama investigation aired just prior to the Dec. 2 vote on the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. It was claimed he took a kickback in the $100 million scandal in the 1990s that engulfed FIFA’s now-defunct marketing partner ISL.

Hayatou denied accepted 100,000 French Francs (about $20,340), saying it was a payment towards his confederation’s 40th anniversary celebrations.

Hayatou was implicated in another bribery scandal earlier this year when The Sunday Times claimed the Qatar 2022 World Cup bid paid him a bribe in exchange for his vote. He denied any wrongdoing and FIFA cleared him after it received no evidence to back up the allegations.