CAPE TOWN: FIFA’s plan to take over the running of African football is set to face a possible roadblock with an executive committee member of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) saying he will challenge the decision in court.

Hasan Bility, who is from Liberia and a CAF executive committee member for last two years, said he will ask the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport to declare invalid the agreement by which FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura will be sent on a secondment to overhaul the African governing body.

Bility said he also wants to ask the court to compel CAF to start a forensic audit of its finances, which he said the executive committee had previously agreed to but CAF president Ahmad Ahmad then stalled. CAF is in crisis following corruption allegations against Ahmad which he has denied.

Ahmad was reported in March to FIFA’s ethics committee for alleged corruption and harassment by CAF general secretary Amr Fahmy. Fahmy was then fired.

He was detained in June by French police in Paris where he was questioned over a sportswear deal between CAF and a French company in which the African body is said to have paid exorbitant prices for equipment it could have got much cheaper directly from the manufacturers.

In a statement released to the media on Monday, former Liberian Football Association president Bility said Ahmad must resign and the proposed FIFA takeover be cancelled.

“In an attempt to salvage CAF from imminent implosion and irreversible reputational damage, FIFA proposed a poorly conceptualised and worse executed agreement,” Bility said.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2019