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Blatter wins damages

The president of the Somali Football Federation, Farah Addo, has been ordered to pay FIFA president Sepp Blatter CHF10,000 ($7,428/EUR6,807) for defamatory statements made against him.

Addo must also pay the costs of the case - CHF14,948 ($11,110/EUR10,178).

At the start of the year, the FIFA Disciplinary Committee suspended Addo from all FIFA activity for a period of two years following the accusations made in the run-up to the FIFA presidential elections last year.

In early 2002, Addo had claimed in the media that irregular financial practices were used to help Blatter’s election as FIFA President in 1998. Addo also made accusations against FIFA Executive Committee member Mohamed Bin Hammam (Qatar) and 'implicitly questioned the integrity' of the FIFA president.

In a further move, FIFA has had to suspend Financial Assistance Programme (FAP) payments to the Somali Football Federation until further notice. During an audit of the 1999–2001 period, FIFA claims it was unable to provide documentation to substantiate the use of a large part of the funds it had received.

This decision was made during a meeting of the FIFA Finance Committee in Zurich last month, based on the relevant provisions in the FAP regulations.

According to these regulations, FIFA can request their external auditors KPMG to conduct an audit of any national association – either on the grounds of suspicion or by drawing lots randomly. If any irregularities are then detected during the audit, or if the use of FAP funds cannot be fully supported by the appropriate documents, FIFA may decide to stop payments to the national associations concerned.

An initial audit of the Somali Football Federation for the year 2001 revealed that there was either no documentation at all, or where evidence did exist, it was proved to be insufficient to support the use of 84 per cent of payments.

The Financial Assistance Programme was ratified by the 1996 FIFA Congress in Zurich and has been in operation since 1999. Each national association receives US$1m (EUR1.6m) per four-year cycle (originally 1999–2002), while each of the six confederations receives US$10m (EUR16m).