World football body FIFA has banned a senior Qatari official from running in elections for a seat on its new-look council over an investigation. Scandal-plagued FIFA's ethics committee last month recommended a two-and-a-half-year ban from the game for Saoud Al-Mohannadi, vice president of the Qatar Football Association, for refusing to cooperate with an inquiry. FIFA has not revealed the subject of the inquiry, but it is not connected with the 2022 World Cup, which Qatar will host. Mohannadi denies any wrongdoing and had been cleared to stand in the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) elections in Goa, India, Tuesday before the AFC announced that he'd been ruled out. "FIFA has advised the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) that, based on the report of the Investigatory Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee, it has decided Mr. Saoud A. Aziz Al-Mohannadi (Qatar) is not eligible to stand in the elections for the FIFA Council," the AFC said in a statement late Sunday. Six candidates from Asia, including China and North Korea, will vie at the AFC extraordinary congress in Goa for three seats on FIFA's council, which was set up under anti-corruption reforms earlier this year. FIFA's all-powerful executive committee, which had become the epicenter of corruption at the organization, was rebranded as a FIFA council at the body's congress in Mexico earlier this year. It was created to operate in a similar way to a company's board of directors as part of plans to make the organization more transparent, including in the awarding of host countries for World Cups, following a string of corruption scandals. Three male candidates — Zhang Jian of China, Iran's Ali Kafashian Naeni and Zainudin Nordin of Singapore — will compete for two of the seats in Tuesday's vote, which will be attended by FIFA President Gianni Infantino Three women are contesting the third slot under FIFA's reforms which state that each confederation must have a minimum of one female representative on the council. Former Australian footballer Moya Dodd is favorite to pip Mahfuza Ahkter of Bangladesh and North Korea's Han Un-Gyong to be the AFC female representative. FIFA disbands racism task force FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura insisted Monday that the fight against racism is being taken "very seriously" despite the governing body's task force overseeing discrimination being abolished. The Associated Press revealed Sunday that the task force was being dismantled after FIFA told its members the mission had been completed after three years. "The task force had a very specific mandate that to our knowledge it has fully fulfilled," Samoura said at the SoccerEx convention. "Its recommendations have now been turned into a program and a strong one." Samoura was appointed in May as the organization's first female and first African top administrator of world soccer's governing body as part of the overhaul under Gianni Infantino. The Senegalese former United Nations official said her "presence here is a strong testimony that for FIFA, it is a zero tolerance policy" on discrimination and it is an inclusive organization. Responding to criticism of the task force being scrapped, Samoura said: "We can live with perceptions, but we are taking very seriously our role as the world governing body of football to fight discrimination." Before Samoura took the SoccerEx platform, a senior British politician spoke out against the decision to dismantle the task force with ongoing concern about racism at stadiums in Russia. Earlier this month, European soccer's governing body, UEFA, ordered Russian club Rostov to close a section of its stadium for its Champions League game against PSV Eindhoven Wednesday as punishment for the racist behavior of fans. "I worry about that with a World Cup looming in Russia," said Andy Burnham, a former sports secretary who speaks on Home Affairs for the opposition Labor Party. "We can't be complacent and feel at all we have succeeded in the fight against racism in sport." The task force was established in 2013 by then-FIFA president Sepp Blatter and headed by Jeffrey Webb, a vice president of world soccer's governing body until he was arrested in 2015 as part of the American investigation into soccer corruption. Webb, who pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, was replaced in September 2015 as task force chairman by Congolese federation president Constant Omari. — Agencies
