Thailand’s Makudi joins Blatter and Platini on sidelines
Thailand’s Worawi Makudi has become the latest Fifa executive to be suspended from all football-related activity by the organisation’s ethics committee.
Makudi, who was a member of Fifa’s executive committee when it voted to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar, has been suspended for 90 days, while Fifa makes further investigations into potential wrongdoing. “The decision was taken … on the grounds that a breach of the code of ethics appears to have been committed...” read a statement. “The case is now the subject of formal investigation proceedings.”
Makudi was an executive committee member for 18 years until May. In July, he was found guilty of forgery in his 2013 re-election to lead the Thailand football federation.A Bangkok court sentenced him to a suspended jail term of one year and four months.
Makudi is one of four men who was named to a parliamentary select committee by former Football Association chairman Lord Triesman in 2011 as having requested a bribe to vote for England to host the 2018 World Cup. The other three were Brazil’s Ricardo Teixeira, JackWarner, of Trinidad, and Paraguayan Nicolas Leoz, who have all been the subjects of indictments and extradition requests as part of the US Department of Justice’s investigation into corruption at Fifa.
It is understood Makudi told Prime Minister David Cameron and Prince William in 2010 that he would vote for England, and then did not. When Russia’s bid was successful, and it emerged that England had received just two votes, the England team’s trip to Thailand to play a friendly was cancelled.
The action by the ethics committee follows decisions to suspend both outgoing president Sepp Blatter and Uefa president Michel Platini.
Meanwhile, Uefa’s executive committee will meet this week to discuss whether it can continue to support Platini. In five hours of questioning by Fifa’s investigators, the Frenchman was unable to produce any formal contract or documentation to explain the £1.35m payment made to him by Fifa in 2011, for work he claims to have undertaken nine years previously. Lastweek Uefa said it was standing by Platini.
Yesterday, Uefa executive committee member Allan Hansen,who is adetectivewith the Danish police, said “we can no longer support him” if no contract is produced.