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South Africa’s FA deny knowledge of $10m bribe

FIFA is facing further questions over its role in channelling a $10 million (£6.4m) payment through its accounts after fresh disclosures about South Africa’s role in the scandal.

A former senior official of the South African FA (SAFA) has claimed its executive board had been kept in the dark about the payment, which is alleged to have been as payment for World Cup votes.

It comes after a freedom of information request by South Africa’s news group Media24 revealed that apart from two letters, no SAFA records exist of any documents or minutes to show that the payment had ever been discussed or authorised by the football body or the 2010 World Cup local organising committee.

Eddie Du Plooy, a SAFA executive committee member until 2009, said he had contacted former colleagues about the $10m payment — sent to the disgraced former vice-president Jack Warner in 2008 nominally to support the “African diaspora” in the Caribbean — and they too had known nothing about it until the bribery scandal broke in May.

He told South African website Sport24: “Everyone I phoned — six, seven people — said they knew nothing about the donation and hadn’t heard of this diaspora programme.

“They were furious. Our integrity is now being questioned. We are seen as being part of the decision. We feel as though we have been sold out.”

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