Bin Hammam Wants Evidence Made Public

Former Asia football chief Mohammed Bin Hammam has revealed on his website that he wants the evidence presented to FIFA that resulted in his lifetime ban from the sport, to be made public.

The 62 year-old was banned this weekend, following a two-day hearing into allegations that the Qatari had tried to buy votes in the run-up to last month’s FIFA presidential election.

Sepp Blatter was voted in for a fourth term as president of world football’s governing body – as the only candidate left, the 75 year-old received 186 of the 203 votes cast and will now stay in office until 2015.

?It followed a late bid from the English and Scottish Football Associations to have the election postponed, following the ongoing corruption row that has surrounded FIFA for the past week, and resulted in Bin Hammam, Blatter’s only rival, withdrawing from the two-man race.

However, in Monday’s statement posted on his official website, Bin Hammam again denied that he tried to bribe votes, and reiterated his intention to appeal the suspension.

The former president of the Asian Football Confederation said: ‘If you wish to hear the evidence presented for and against at the hearing in an impartial way, then my lawyers have already said and requested that the transcript should be made available to the media by FIFA so that you can judge the evidence and testimony for yourself’.

‘I have nothing to hide and I hope FIFA will not use confidentiality as an excuse. After all, FIFA’s record towards revealing confidential information to the media during these proceedings speaks for itself. Nonetheless, I am the affected party and I assure FIFA that I will never sue them for releasing the transcript of the proceedings’.

If he is to appeal, Bin Hammam must wait several weeks for a full report of the ethics committee’s sentence.

He will first have to go to FIFA’s appeals committee, and can then take his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.