FIFA bans African official for 10 years for financial wrongdoing

FIFA banned a senior African soccer official for 10 years on Wednesday for financial wrongdoing, including taking funds from a campaign tackling Ebola.

FIFA said its ethics judges banned Musa Bility, a member of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) executive committee, for 10 years and fined him $507,200 (500,000 Swiss francs).

In December 2015, Bility was blocked as a FIFA presidential candidate after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld a ruling that he failed an integrity check. That election was won two months later by current president Gianni Infantino.

Bility's plan to block FIFA in Africa

The Liberian businessman's ban from all soccer duties was announced days after he said he would appeal to CAS against a FIFA-backed plan to send its top administrator from Zurich to oversee the troubled African soccer body.

Bility, who is from Liberia and a CAF executive committee member for last two years, said he will ask the Swiss-based CAS to declare invalid the agreement by which FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura will be sent on a secondment to overhaul the African governing body.

Bility said he also wants to ask the court to compel CAF to start a forensic audit of its finances, which he said the executive committee had previously agreed to but CAF president Ahmad Ahmad then stalled.

Ahmad was reported in March to FIFA's ethics committee for alleged corruption and harassment by CAF general secretary Amr Fahmy. Fahmy was then fired.

FIFA's Bility investigation

FIFA's ethics committee has been formally investigating Bility since last May after soccer's world body audited the financial accounts of the Liberian soccer federation (LFA), which he led.

FIFA found conflicts of interest including "various payments made by the LFA to (and received from) entities owned by or connected to Mr Bility and his family."

FIFA also identified "misappropriation of the funds granted under FIFA's '11 against Ebola' campaign." It was launched in 2014 by FIFA working with the World Health Organization and included Cristiano Ronaldo helping raise awareness of the medical emergency in Africa.

Bility was also suspected of misappropriating money from Liberia's annual grants from FIFA which are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

In recent weeks, after Bility was questioned by FIFA's ethics investigators, he led resistance within CAF's top committee against a plan for Samoura, who is from Senegal, effectively running the Cairo-based organisation on an initial six-month basis.

Bility said the move breached CAF's legal statutes and would be the basis of his appeal to sport's highest court in Switzerland.

It is unclear if he has legal standing to file that appeal while banned from all soccer duty.

Bility can also go to CAS to challenge his 10-year ban.