The 15 are all under investigation after attending Mohamed Bin Hammam’s campaign visit to Trinidad in May at the time he was still planning to take on Sepp Blatter for the FIFA Presidency.
A source close to FIFA’s Ethics Committee told insideworldfootball that the 15 are almost certain to be summoned to FIFA headquarters in Zurich at the Committee’s scheduled October meeting to answer charges relating to $40,000 (£25,000/€29,000) bribes allegedly offered by Bin Hammam.
The hearing is expected to take up to four days given the number of officials being probed, it is understood.
The Ethics Committee has already looked into the case of a sixteenth Caribbean member, Colin Klass of Guyana, suspended in August pending a full inquiryand after havin his case heard, was handed down a 26 month ban from all forms of the sport.
Klass was the only one of the 16 Caribbean Football Union (CFU) members to be sanctioned ahead of any ethics committee hearing after FIFA cited “consideration of the specific information received on this matter.”
insideworldfootball also reported that it has learned that the information concerned relates to an attempt to obstruct the investigation into both Bin Hammam – banned for life by FIFA – and Jack Warner, the two former powerbrokers at the centre of the bribery claims.
Warner, who was president of CONCACAF and FIFA’s longest-serving vice-president, resigned from all footballing activities after being charged, while Bin Hammam is planning to take his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Klass, a member of FIFA’s futsal and beach soccer committee, is a long-time ally of Warner and attended the notorious Trinidad meeting. After being suspended Klass, the most senior of all the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) officials under the spotlight, said: “My position remains the same and I will be outspoken about it. “They are going about things in the wrong way. “I fear no evil because I am not worried.”
