WORLD soccer 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, today 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 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 today’s vote, which will be attended by FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

    (SD-Agencies)