Chung fined, banned

Sports

FORMER Papua New Guinea Football Association (PNGFA) president David Chung has been fined K337,700 and banned from football for six years for financial wrongdoing linked to a NZ$20 million (K45.8 million) building project.
Chung was deputy to president Gianni Infantino as the longest-serving of Fifa’s eight vice-presidents when he resigned in April during an investigation into the construction of new headquarters for the New Zealand-based Oceania Football Confederation (OFC).
Fifa said its ethics committee found the 56-year-old guilty of “having offered and accepted gifts’’ and “conflict of interest”.
Chung, pictured, was fined 100,000 Swiss francs (K337,700), which he must pay before he can return to work in football.
He resigned as Oceania president after a Fifa-appointed audit found irregularities linked to awarding of contracts for its headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand.
Fifa, which had given US$16.8 million (K56.74 million) to the OFC in 2017, froze funding to the 11-member regional body.
Chung had been PNGFA president since 2004.
The Malaysian came to PNG in 1985 and was involved in PNG soccer from late 1990s before ascending to the top of the PNGFA after heading Chimbu soccer.
He rose to lead Oceania after a World Cup bidding scandal implicated his predecessor Reynald Temarii of Tahiti.
Temarii was filmed talking to undercover reporters from British newspaper The Sunday Times during the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting contests won by Russia and Qatar.
He was banned for one year by Fifa.
In 2015, he was banned for eight years because he took money from Fifa powerbroker Mohamed bin Hammam, of Qatar, to pay his legal bills in the original ethics case.
The Oceania football body is now led by interim president Lambert Maltock, of Vanuatu.
Chung’s exit from Fifa means five of its eight vice-presidents in May 2015 — when American and Swiss prosecutors unsealed sweeping corruption investigations — plus then-president Sepp Blatter and secretary general Jerome Valcke have since been banned for unethical financial conduct or resigned while under criminal investigation. – AP