{"id":166514,"date":"2015-11-12T18:10:44","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T18:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=166514"},"modified":"2015-11-12T18:10:44","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T18:10:44","slug":"fifa-musa-bility-rejected-as-presidential-candidate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=166514","title":{"rendered":"Fifa: Musa Bility rejected as presidential candidate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Liberia&#8217;s Musa Bility has been ruled out as a candidate for the Fifa presidency following integrity checks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Football&#8217;s world governing body has approved five of the presidential candidates, with suspended Uefa boss Michel Platini also not included.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The Frenchman could be added should his ban end before February&#8217;s election.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, Jerome Champagne, Gianni Infantino, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa and Tokyo Sexwale have been approved.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Bility, the 48-year-old president of the Liberian Football Association, was given a six month ban from all football activities in 2013 for using confidential documents from African football&#8217;s governing body in a legal challenge against Issa Hayatou.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">He was involved in a fight against Caf&#8217;s rule changes to the process that effectively allowed president Issa Hayatou to be re-elected unopposed in March.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Bility said he has been informed by Fifa that his candidacy was &#8220;principally rejected&#8221; because of the ban.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;I reject this and think it&#8217;s unfortunate,&#8221; he added. &#8220;My decision to fight CAF at the time was a genuine attempt to change African football and prevent rules from being arbitrarily violated.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8220;I am awaiting the review by my team of lawyers to determine my next course of action.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Fifa said it would not comment further on the reasons for Bility&#8217;s exclusion, which he can challenge at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The election is to find a successor to the suspended Sepp Blatter, who is under criminal investigation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The 79-year-old Swiss announced he would be stepping down in June, with world football&#8217;s governing body at the centre of a corruption scandal.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Fifa and Swiss prosecutors are investigating a \u00a31.35m &#8220;gentleman&#8217;s agreement&#8221; payment made in 2011 for work Platini did as Blatter&#8217;s adviser nine years earlier.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Both men deny any wrongdoing and are appealing against their 90-day bans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&#8211;<br \/>\nSource: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Liberia&#8217;s Musa Bility has been ruled out as a candidate for the Fifa presidency following integrity checks. Football&#8217;s world governing body has approved five of the presidential candidates, with suspended Uefa boss Michel Platini also not included. The Frenchman could be added should his ban end before February&#8217;s election. Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, Jerome Champagne, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":158576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3,38],"class_list":["post-166514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-ghana-news","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/158576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}