Last year, stakeholders in Cameroonian football brought allegations of inappropriate behavior against the President of the Cameroonian Football Federation, Samuel Eto’o, to the attention of the Confederation of African Football (CAF).
On August 9, 2023, the African football governing body announced the opening of an investigation.
However, according to Antoine Vey, lawyer for the former Cameroonian footballer, “this investigation was opened solely to create negative publicity towards Eto’o.” Indeed, Samuel and the president of the Cameroonian club, Victoria United, were summoned by CAF this Wednesday in Cairo, Egypt.
They are expected to be questioned in the case of audio recordings incriminating them in alleged match-fixing.
According to “The Guardian,” in an interview with the president of FECAFOOT’s lawyers, they asserted that these audio recordings provided no evidence of match-fixing.
Moreover, according to the media outlet, they questioned the legality of this recording.
Regarding the complaint filed with FIFA, the defense lawyers stated that CAF’s Secretary-General, Veron Mosengo-Omba, played a significant role in launching a media campaign against their client. They particularly accuse the secretary-general of violating FIFA’s code of ethics, including “an attack on physical and moral integrity,” abuse of power, and a breach of confidentiality duty.
“We have been able to identify some of the people who contributed to this situation, including the secretary-general,” said Antoine Vey, Eto’o’s lawyer, to The Guardian.
“It is him we are talking about in our complaint. We wonder who recorded this tape and for what purpose. Mr. Eto’o does not acknowledge participating in a conversation in which he obviously talks about corruption.
If you listen to the tape, he is trying to reassure the president of a club about some problems he is facing; he says the problem will be resolved, but he does not say it was through illegal means or anything like that.
We don’t really see what the tape serves. It has little to do with the procedure and is only a part of a campaign aimed at damaging Eto’o’s reputation,” he stated.
“And to add, ‘We believe this investigation is unfounded and was opened solely to create negative publicity towards Mr. Eto’o.
We do not accept the way they behave. If you take the timeline, we do not understand why [the hearing] is taking place now and why it did not happen in August. We can also see that people use these kinds of procedural absurdities to create fake news about him.’”
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