Gaurav Thapa, the son of All Nepal Football Federation (ANFA) President Ganesh Thapa received $ 100,000 (Rs 88 lakhs) from the suspended President of Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Mohamed bin Hammam as the latter used the AFC bank accounts to enrich himself, pay for the lavish expenses of his family and hand out tens of thousands of dollars in cash to federation presidents and their relatives.
The cash handed out to federation presidents and their relatives went to their personal bank accounts and none of it was for football related expenses, according to the Associated Press.
In one of the biggest corruption cases to rock the football world, Hammam, the 63-year-old Qatari who was once a candidate to oust FIFA President Sepp Blatter as the sport’s worldwide leader, is accused of using the AFC bank accounts to hand out hundreds of thousands of dollars to friends and relatives, according to an audit obtained by the AP.
The audit was prepared by the international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and dated July 13. A copy of the report was obtained by the AP; its contents were confirmed by two people with direct knowledge of the report who spoke on condition of anonymity because it hasn’t been made public.
The report offered rare details of the usually secretive accounts of not-for-profit football bodies handling hundreds of millions of dollars. And it portrayed a man who was running Asian soccer like a family business, negotiating contracts on his own and mingling his personal and AFC bank accounts.
Hammam received millions of dollars from individuals linked to AFC contracts, according to the audit, and spent tens of thousands of dollars on items like a honeymoon for his son and dental work, haircuts and cash payments for his family.
It found he spent $700,000 from AFC coffers on himself and his family, including $100,000 for his wife, $10,000 on a Bulgari watch for himself and nearly $5,000 for his daughter’s cosmetic dentistry.
Payments were also made to Asian, African and Caribbean football officials, including $250,000 to Jack Warner, the longtime strongman of Caribbean football.
“The arrangement with Mr Hammam’s use of the sundry debtors account is, in our view, highly unusual and reflects poor governance,” the audit said. “We question why Mr Hammam would conduct his personal financial transactions through the AFC’s bank accounts when the documents we have seen indicate that he already has several personal bank accounts in various countries,” the audit said.
The Asian governing body, which he has led since 2002 was advised to seek “legal advice in respect of … whether the actions of Hammam, and other parties identified in this report, constitute criminal and/or civil breaches.” Bin Hammam was suspended for 30 days by the AFC following receipt of the report last week.
Hammam’s United States lawyer said the allegations were a FIFA tactic to block his return to world football.
“If there were ever any question about the political motives behind FIFA’s vendetta against Mr. Bin Hammam, it has been answered by the outrageous and baseless new charges that FIFA and AFC are bringing against him,” lawyer Eugene Gulland said in a statement.
The audit found Gaurav Thapa, whose father heads the Nepalese federation, received $100,000 while a Filipino football official Jose Mari Martinez received $60,000 and had $11,226 in hospital expenses paid. Another $50,000 went to an East Timorese football official Francisco Kalbuadi Lay, the audit found.
Another $25,000 went for tuition expenses for a Bangladesh football federation spokesman and $20,000 to cover the cost of cancer treatment for the federation’s general secretary.
Also, nearly $2,000 was spent by Bin Hammam to buy 14 shirts for Blatter and nearly $5,000 went toward the purchase of suits for Issa Hayatou, the CAF president.
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