Ahead of congress on Thursday, FIFA president Gianni Infantino and the council announced they had proposed not to retain the services of ethics chiefs Hans-Joachim Eckert and Cornel Borbely.
Eckert and Borbely’s work over the past few years has been seen as instrumental in exposing corruption in world football, and helping to bring to an end Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini’s involvement in FIFA.
Now, Eckert and Borbely have released a joint-statement saying “FIFA will suffer from this decision in the medium and long term”.
The statement continued: “The work of a credible and independent Ethics Committee is an important part of the FIFA reforms whose goal was to restore the trust of the public and other stakeholders.
“Since 2015 the Investigatory Chamber has carried out 194 investigations and the Adjudicatory Chamber has sentenced more than 70 officials.
“The impending and clearly politically motivated non-reappointment puts de facto an end to the reform efforts. This will inevitably lead to a renewed loss of trust and further hurt the already tarnished image of FIFA.”
The frustration and anger felt by the two men is clear from the rare statement. Understandably so, given the amount of work undertaken and the fact that they both had expected to continue their roles past this week.
In fact, it is understood Eckert learned about his removal whilst on a flight to Bahrain where a hastily arranged ethics committee press conference was arranged for Wednesday morning.
There, the two men told reporters: "We investigated several hundred cases and several hundred are still pending and ongoing at the moment".
The proposed replacements for chairmen of the two chambers of the ethics committee are Colombian lawyer Maria Claudia Rojas and Greek judge Vassilios Skouris. Their appointments will be put to the FIFA congress for approval on Thursday.
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