FIFA’s ethics watchdog on Monday banned Thai football chief Worawi Makudi for 90 days as acting president Issa Hayatou delayed his arrival at football’s corruption-hit ruling body by 24 hours.
The ethics committee said it had moved to sideline Worawi “on the grounds that a breach of the Code of Ethics appears to have been committed and a decision on the main issue may not be taken early enough.”
Worawi was a FIFA executive committee member for 18 years until May and has faced multiple allegations of wrongdoing.
He was found guilty in July by a Thai court of forgery in his reelection as head of the Football Association of Thailand.
Monday’s ban follows matching suspensions handed out to beleaguered outgoing FIFA president Sepp Blatter and European football boss Michel Platini last Thursday.
Hayatou had been set to turn up at FIFA’s Zurich headquarters to assume command on Tuesday, but the 69-year-old African football boss’s arrival is “now expected on Wednesday”, a FIFA press spokesperson said.
He was appointed caretaker boss of FIFA in his capacity as its oldest serving vice-president.
Hayatou was in his native Cameroon at the weekend, and has since moved on to the Gabon capital Libreville to take charge of a Confederation of African Football meeting.
Blatter was relieved of his duties by FIFA’s ethics committee as Swiss prosecutors investigate him for criminal mismanagement.
The 79-year-old, who was due to stand aside from the organisation he has run since 1998 in February, is appealing his suspension.
On Sunday, a defiant Blatter told Swiss weekly Schweizer am Sonntag: “I’m a fighter. They can destroy me, but they can’t destroy my life’s work.”
Platini, the UEFA president and a front runner to succeed Blatter, is also appealing his ban.
The former French football legend has denied any wrongdoing in accepting a $2million payment from FIFA in 2011 for consulting work he undertook years earlier and called the ban “farcical.”
