Banned ref handled Warriors’ last 2017 Afcon match

IVORIAN referee Denis Dembele, who was handed a six-year ban by the Confederation of African Football last week as part of a massive crackdown on corrupt match officials on the continent, was the man in charge of the Warriors’ 2017 AFCON Group B final match in Gabon.

Eleven match officials were sanctioned by CAF last week after they were caught up in the sting operation done by shadowy Ghanaian investigative journalist, Anas Aremayea Anas, who never shows his face to the public, during a two-year investigation into corruption in African football.

The referees were caught on video accepting bribes from undercover investigators, posing as club representatives who claimed they were just giving them some gifts and the CAF Disciplinary Committee last Saturday handed various sanctions on the match officials.

Kenyan assistant referee, Marwa Range, who had been set to be one of the match officials to handle the 2018 FIFA World Cup before he was axed from those who went to Russia after the video showing him receiving a cash gift before a CAF Champions League match went public, was handed a life ban from all CAF-related football activities.

Range was one of the assistant referees during the 2017 AFCON final between Cameroon and Egypt in Gabon last year which was handled by Zambian referee Janny Sikazwe who was at the 2018 World Cup.

West Africa dominates the list of those who were sanctioned with others being banned for years ranging from two to 10 years.

Yanissou Bebou, a referee from Togo and Jallow Ebrima, an assistant referee from Gambia, were handed 10-year bans by CAF, Ivorian referee Dembele was banned for six years and there were fiveyear bans for Burkinabe referee Boukari Ouedraogo, Malian assistant referee Moriba Diakite, Mauritanian assistant referee, Demba Boubou and Niger’s assistant referee Maman Raja Abba Malan Ousseini.

Two other assistant referees, Marius Tan and Bi Valere Gouho, as well as referee Coulibay Abou, who are all Ivorians, were banned for two years.

Three Ghanaian match officials — referee Lathbridge Reginald, referee Bello Aboudou, and assistant referee Nantierre Eric — were provisionally suspended pending their appearance before the CAF Disciplinary Board on August 5 this year.

The Herald has established that Dembele, who received the third heaviest punishment, was the referee who was in charge of the Warriors final Group B match against Tunisia at the 2017 AFCON finals in Gabon last year in which Callisto Pasuwa’s men slumped to a 2-4 defeat.

“There were some poor decisions from the referee, especially in the first half,” Pasuwa told the media after the match.

“We lacked concentration maybe in first minutes of the game and that made us lose the game.

“You can see the way we were leaving them unattended and allowing them to shoot at goal. In the second half it was becoming better though.

“I thought also they (the players) reacted to the officiating and frustration crippled in their heads and they were doing unnecessary tackles that ended up costing us at the end of the day.”

Dembele awarded the Tunisians a penalty in the first half, after consulting with his assistant referee, after ruling that a Tunisian forward went down under the challenge of Costa Nhamoinesu.

The Zimbabwe defender was shown a yellow card.

Television replays clearly showed that the Tunisian forward should have been punished for controlling the ball with his hand, under pressure from Nhamoinesu, before the defender made the push that resulted in him being punished by the assistant referee for a foul resulting in the penalty which was converted by Wahbi Khazri.

There was a bust-up between the Ivorian referee and one of the Warriors’ stars during that final Group B game against Tunisia who claimed he heard the two Ivorian match officials asking about the score in the other match between Senegal and Algeria.

“Our player was taken aback by that and asked the referee and his assistant as to why they wanted to know the scoreline in the other match.

“It was quite ugly and one of our coaching staff also said he heard it and wondered what this meant given that the events in the other match had a bearing to our fate,” sources said.

The result of the other match had a bearing in who qualified for the quarter-finals with the Warriors having a chance should they have won and Algeria, as it turned out, were beaten by Senegal.

Interestingly, the assistant referee who was consulted by Dembele in that contentious penalty incident was his fellow countryman, Marius Donna Tien Tan, who was running the lines that day.

Tan was slapped with a twoyear ban by CAF last weekend when he was one of the match officials who were caught in secret video recordings, by the undercover team fronted by Anas, accepting financial gifts while on duty across the continent in the past two years.

The two Ivorian match officials had partnered to handle the CAF Confederation Cup match between Tunisian giants Etoile Sportive du Sahel against Moroccan club Kawkab Marrakech in 2016 in a game in which the Tunisians lost 1-2 with Dembele giving them a penalty late in the game, only for the Moroccans to find the winner towards the end.

Etoile provided three players — goalkeeper Aymen Mathlonthi, defender Zied Boughatass and midfielder Hamza Lahmar — to the Tunisian squad which was in Gabon.

The CAF Referees Committee also seconded Dembele as the fourth official during the Warriors opening match in Gabon last year, which ended in a 2-2 draw against Algeria, on January 15 in Franceville.

Dembele was also handed the responsibility by the CAF Referees Committee to handle the CAF Champions League match between CAPS United and Zamalek in Alexandria in March last year which the five-time African champions won 2-0 with all the three Green Machine defensive players, Devon Chafa, Valentine Musarurwa and Moses Muchenje being shown yellow cards.