June 7, 2021
Following his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against the decision of the SLFA Ethics Board declaring him ineligible to contest in the upcoming SLFA Elective Congress 2021 pursuant to Article 17(1) and (2) of the SLFA Ethics Code and Regulations 2020 and Article 26(2) of the FIFA Code of Ethics, Rodney Michael has been declared eligible as CAS partially overturns the decision of the Ethics Board. CAS is yet to provide the grounds of the decision.
However, CAS maintained the fines and penalties imposed on Rodney Michael by the SLFA Ethics Board for taking the Sierra Leone FA to a state court in 2014 instead referring the dispute to arbitration which is in contravention of Article 13(f) of the SLFA Statutes 2020 which
states that members are obliged “To adopt a statutory provision specifying that any dispute requiring arbitration involving itself or one of its members and relating to the statutes, regulations, directives and decision of FIFA, CAF, SLFA and member organization or association or the leagues shall come and solely under the jurisdiction of an arbitration tribunal set up for this purpose and that recourse to ordinary courts is prohibited”.
In another development, the SLFA Ethics Board has declared Christian Dauda Thompson ineligible to contest in the SLFA Elective Congress scheduled for the 4 and 5 June 2021 “on the basis of the fact that he made untrue statement to the Board in relation to his residency”.
Signed by:
Ibrahim Kamara
Head of Media and Marketing- SLFA