Blake willing to rethink CIFA review panel
Bruce Blake, CIFA President
(CNS): Following the Office of the Auditor General’s refusal to take part in the independent review of the Cayman Islands Football Association’s books and the sports minister’s insistence that the CIFA executive remains well away from the review panel, the CIFA president has said he was willing to rethink the situation. Bruce Blake, who formally took over the post from Jeffrey Webb following his recent conviction for corruption in the FIFA scandal, has said that he will discuss the membership of the panel with the rest of the executive.
“The idea was to give all the stakeholders an opportunity to participate,” Blake told CNS about the plan to conduct an open and independent review of the Goal programme and the donations from FIFA for the development of two pitches in Cayman.
Blake said he would also talk to Sports Minister Osbourne Bodden, who has told the local football association that it must undertake a forensic audit before he will consider returning the funding government gives to CIFA. “I am happy for all persons not related to CIFA to be on the review committee,” Blake added.
Meanwhile, as the global football criminal investigations continue in Switzerland and the US, former FIFA president Sepp Blatter appears to have finally accepted that his lucrative career in football is over, after he and UEFA boss, Michel Platini, were banned from FIFA for eight years. Despite a defiant press conference in the wake of the ban, in an interview with the WSJ yesterday he said, “I’ve finished my work in football.”
While Blatter has not been arrested in connection to the criminal investigations in the US and Europe, those enquiries continue to widen, with more than 40 officials having been charged in what the US authorities have described as a massive racketeering scheme that has gone on for decades during Blatter’s time at the top of the game.
Category: Crime, Government Finance, Politics
What is everybody holding on for? Just scrap the program and start a new one. Take the young boys create a new committee with new members, new national team, new name, and get the funding from Ossie and start all over. This way Bruce will be left alone to have a serious re-think when everything is strip from him. Why the hassle?
Whilst your suggestion has great merit there is a serious dilemma faced by football in the Cayman Islands. A new association needs much more than Government funding. It needs clubs to join as members and to provide some of the board of directors as well as providing funding. A new association will also require sponsorship, something that CIFA was acutely short of. The new association would require in depth negotiations with FIFA to become a member and take advantage of grants from the goal programme( should this be gaol Programme?).
On the other hand who wants to be on the executive committee of CIFA. It is seriously tainted. Anyone thinking of being elected must firstly consider their own legal position as well as calling for an immediate investigation into how almost CI$4m was spent on a 1525 square foot building and one football pitch. To this day the 2014 audit has not been completed and one wonders why.
On the face of it, it appears that CIFA may well be able to recover substantial amounts of money from the former committee members and possibly contractors but who will do that? It will not be the current committee.
So football remains between the devil and the dark blue sea in the Cayman Islands. The wisdom of Solomon is surely required to resolve this Herculean task.
What a clown.
If he resigns then the truth will come out and the ants nest would be stirred and you would be surprised of who has been collecting cash, free travels, free watches, etc….
Just do the audit already!
Willing? He has no credibility and no choice. Lets see who gets mixed up with the lavish travel arrangements Mr. Webb used to overpaid on behalf of CONCACAF.
Mr Blake – If you want to be taken seriously publish all the accounts for expenditure on the 2008/9 pitch upgrades and the Centre for Excellence, show us where all that money went. That’s the biggest financial commitment CIFA has made in the past decade and I suspect they also have the greatest potential for a bit of ‘leakage’.
How about he gets to show the accounts to some of his buddies in CIFA and they can check them?
Is anything ever open and independent in such a small country as Cayman? Just asking!
They need to throw all you bums out and start a new! Ya’ll sat on the side lines and ate popcorn while the show was in play. Ya’ll need to go too!
Bruce Blake and the CIFA Executive need to rethink their entire position and resign if they care about football in Cayman.
Why would you even think he cares about football? Why?
Shameless. He should resign for even suggesting something that stupid.