In what would appear to be a never ending story that dates back to a meeting in the Caribbean, on May 10th & 11th 2011, that was attended by Bermuda Football Association Second Vice-President Gregory Grimes and General Secretary David Sabir. It was alleged that at the meeting, CFU nations were offered US$40,000 in return for supporting bin Hammam at the June 1 FIFA presidential election against incumbent Sepp Blatter.
Now FIFA provisionally banned outgoing executive committee member Chuck Blazer of the United States from all football-related activities for 90 days yesterday after he was accused of embezzling at least US$21 million last month.
Blazer had previously said he'll be giving up his seat on FIFA's ruling board when his term expires this month and was accused of having enriched himself through fraud in a report released in April by CONCACAF, the governing body for North and Central American and Caribbean football.
Blazer is a former secretary general of CONCACAF and was accused of embezzling at least $21 million by compensating himself with the body's funds without any authorization.
Blazer, the most senior American official at FIFA for 16 years, also allegedly bought some apartments with CONCACAF money.
He resigned as CONCACAF's secretary general in December 2011.
FIFA said in a statement yesterday that its ethics committee decided to provisionally ban Blazer "based on the fact that various breaches of the FIFA Code of Ethics appear to have been committed by" the American.
Blazer has not commented on the ethics allegations.
The American was the whistle-blower in a bribery scandal involving his former boss at CONCACAF, Jack Warner, who resigned as the body's president in June 2011 after Blazer accused him and then-Asian confederation head, Mohamed bin Hammam, of attempting to bribe Caribbean delegates US$40,000 each to vote for bin Hammam in the FIFA presidential election.
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