Caribbean official Colin Klass has been summoned by FIFA to answer charges Friday relating to $40,000 bribes allegedly offered by former presidential candidate Mohamed Bin Hammam. FIFA provisionally suspended the Guyana football federation president last month pending a full investigation by FGI Europe, an agency led by former FBI director Louis Freeh. “We can confirm that the ethics committee will hold a meeting on Friday, Sept. 23 to look at the case of Colin Klass, who was provisionally suspended on Aug. 11,” the governing body of world football said Monday in a statement. Another 15 Caribbean officials under investigation after attending Bin Hammam's May 10 campaign visit to Trinidad are awaiting hearing dates at FIFA headquarters. Klass was the only one of the 16 to be suspended pending a hearing after FIFA cited “consideration of the specific information received on this matter.” Klass, a member of FIFA's futsal and beach soccer committee, is a longtime ally of former FIFA vice president Jack Warner, who ran Caribbean football for three decades until resigning in June. Klass attended the Caribbean Football Union meeting in Trinidad where Bin Hammam allegedly offered voters $40,000 payments to back his later-abandoned election challenge to FIFA President Sepp Blatter. FIFA's appeals panel upheld Bin Hammam's life ban last week.
