Aziz Kara banned for life
2008-05-28 07:46
Johannesburg - Aziz Kara's appeal against his First Division club FC AK's demotion to the Third Division after they were initially fined R500 000 for bribery and corruption was rejected with cost and now he has incurred an even harsher sentence while at the same time ordered to pay for the Appeal Board's sitting at their chambers on Tuesday.
FC AK have now been docked 15 points, which effectively means that they have dropped to the bottom of the Inland stream First Division with 21 points, the same number of points attained by Ga-Rankuwa United who have been relegated to the Vodacom League.
Owner Aziz Kara's 30-year ban from taking part in football activities has been overturned and instead he has now been banned for life.
The club had initially been found guilty of attempting to bribe an opposition goalkeeper Michael Babale after a third party approached the player claiming to be representing the club and requested the goalkeeper to develop butter fingers and let slip a couple of goals when FC AK faced Mpumalanga Black Aces.
Babale informed his club, who in turn alerted the police. Aces, in conjunction with the police, informed Babale to play along and laid a trap for the culprit. Babale agreed to the scam and a third party purported to be acting on behalf of FC AK deposited R10 000 into Babale's bank account. The player showed the deposit slip to his club and the police which was used as evidence against Kara.
Demise and dismissal
Although Kara admitted to have known the person who deposited the money into Babale's account, he asserted that he knew nothing about the deposited money. But the PSL Disciplinary Committee dismissed his explanation, fined the club R500 000, banned the owner from participating in any football activity sanctioned by Safa for 30 years and informed Fifa about their decision.
Kara alleged that there was a vendetta against him and levelled serious allegations against the PSL chairperson, claiming Dr Irvin Khoza had a vested interest in his case and suspected that the league chairperson was orchestrating his demise and dismissal from the league and threatened to produce evidence that he was being targeted with the intention to bring him down. Kara further said that he was prepared to take his case to Fifa.
But on Tuesday night, his appeal was dismissed with costs and although he threatened to turn to Fifa where he claimed his case will be favourably looked at, the rules state that if he is not happy and satisfied about the Appeal Board's ruling, his next port of call to post his displeasure is the arbitrator.
The arbitrator's ruling shall be binding and final to both parties, which could prevent him from pursuing the case with Fifa or the courts of law.
In the meantime, promotional playoffs have been held up by this case. It is not clear at this stage who should be declared the Inland stream winners who must face the Coastal stream winners to determine the First Division team that must gain automatic promotion.
At the same time, the loser must join runners-up in both Coastal and Inland stream, who are supposed to join Black Leopards in yet another fight for a single slot up for grabs in the Premiership.
But now Tuesday night's ruling could open up a can of worms. With FC AK having been docked 15 points, mathematically it gives Ga-Rankuwa United the opportunity to stay in the First Division as FC AK should be relegated in place of the Tshwane team.
