British MP says Fifa candidate part of ‘cash for votes’ scandal

This amounts to a fresh cash-for-votes scandal which needs urgent investigation

Damian Collins British member of parliament

– A British lawmaker has accused Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al Khalifa, a frontrunner in the Fifa presidential race, of being involved in a “cash-for-votes” scandal.

Damian Collins said in Britain’s House of Commons that Sheikh Salman, one of the favourites to succeed Sepp Blatter in charge of the tainted world body, had questions to answer over his election as president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 2013.

Sheikh Salman strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Collins, a member of Britain’s ruling Conservative Party and a campaigner for better governance in sport, said there were “strong grounds to suspect” the Kyrgyz Republic’s delegation to the AFC had voted for Sheikh Salman in the belief they would receive “significant financial support” for football projects from the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA). The OCA is headed by an ally of the sheikh.

A spokesperson for Sheikh Salman told Britain’s Times newspaper last week there was no “credible evidence” behind the allegations.

Collins also told MPs that e-mails between the delegation and OCA, prior to the confederation’s presidential election in May 2013, included requests for funding, despite there being “no legitimate reason” for such requests.

His latest intervention comes ahead of Fifa’s vote for a new president tomorrow.

Collins said that if Sheikh Salman was chosen, the British government should withdraw support for any English Football Association bid to host Fifa tournaments.

Using a public petition to raise the issue, Collins’s comments were protected from any legal defamation action as he was speaking in parliament.

His petition noted that “three days before the vote, requests for support for 53 projects for Kyrgyz football to the tune of millions of pounds were discussed, although there seems to be no legitimate reason for [Kyrgyz football], part of Fifa, to be seeking funding from the OCA, part of the International Olympic Committee.

Collins added Kyrgyz football “approached the OCA again after the AFC election, asking when they would receive payment for their projects, which gives strong grounds to suspect that [Kyrgyzstan] voted for Sheikh Salman because they believed they would receive significant financial support from the OCA.”

This, said Collins, amounted to a “fresh cash-for-votes scandal which needs urgent investigation”. –