FIFA has taken the embarrassing step of taking away African soccer confederation president Issa Hayatou‘s positions as chairman of the 2012 Olympic soccerorganizing committee and the GOAL Bureau development program a day after it had confirmed he had been named to the positions. FIFA blamed a “technical error” for the posting of the appointments on itsweb site.
Hayatou’s appointment to FIFA’s Olympic committee was controversial since he is still under investigation for corruption by the IOC’s ethics commission regarding allegationsmade on the BBC television program Panorama that he took $20,000 from now-defunct marketing agency ISL in the 1990s. He has been a member of the IOC since 2001.
The 65-year-oldCameroonian denied the claims made on Panorama and separate allegations he had accepted bribes to support Qatar’s 2022 World Cup bid. The woman who made those allegations later recanted her story.
Hayatou had previously chaired FIFA’s Olympics organizing committee from 1992 to 2006. He ran against Sepp Blatter for FIFA president in 2002 and lost.
The chairmanship of theGOAL Bureau has been vacant since the ban of Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed bin Hammam. That position is considered important in FIFA politicalcircles since the GOAL Bureau awards grants to soccer projects around the world.