Russian minister Mutko barred from FIFA re-election: sources

[March 10, 2017]  By Brian Homewood

ZURICH (Reuters) - Russian deputy prime minister Vitaly Mutko has been barred from standing for re-election for a place on the FIFA Council, sources close to the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The sources said that Mutko, who is also head of the Russian Football Union (RFU), had failed an eligibility test carried out by the FIFA review committee.

The sources said that Mutko had been barred because his ministerial role contravened the statutes of the global soccer body and that the decision was not connected to the doping scandal which has engulfed Russian sport.

Mutko was Russia's Minister of Sport from 2008 until last October, when he was promoted to his current position.

FIFA and UEFA could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mutko, however, shrugged off the decision, which he said would have no effect on the World Cup to be staged next year, and said he would not appeal.

"The committee's decision has no bearing on that," Mutko told the Russian news agency TASS.

"I wanted to be re-elected but now the FIFA... has somewhat changed the criteria. A new criteria, political neutrality, has been introduced. This is their right."

"This is public work, everything is normal," he added

Russian sport was rocked last year by the publication of the McLaren report, commission by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which detailed a system of state-sponsored doping in the country.

It said that Moscow had concealed hundreds of positive doping cases from a variety of sports, including soccer.

DENIES WRONGDOING

The report said that Russian Deputy Sports Minister Yuri Nagornykh had decided which athletes would benefit from a cover-up, known as a SAVE order, although Mutko, it alleged, appeared to make the decision with regard to footballers.

Nagornykh was dismissed in October.

Mutko, who has denied wrongdoing, was among five candidates for four four-year term European places on the FIFA Council, which makes the key strategic decisions for the global soccer body.

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko attends a news conference after a meeting of the management board of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia local organising committee in Moscow, Russia, July 5, 2016. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin/File Photo

The remaining four, who can now be elected unopposed, are Sandor Csyani (Hungary), Costakis Koutsokoumnis (Cyprus),Dejan Savicevic (Montenegro) and Geir Thorsteinsson (Iceland).

Mutko, 58, has sat on the Council since 2009, when it was known as the executive committee.

FIFA insists that the sport remains free of government interference. Article 23 of the FIFA statutes states that continental confederation such as UEFA must be "independent and avoid any form of political interference".

Article 19 also states that "each member association shall manage its affairs independently and without undue influence from third parties."

Although this is a long-standing rule, eligibility checks on candidates for office were only introduced last year in response to a corruption scandal.

The UEFA elections will take place at the UEFA Congress in Helsinki on April 5. Germany's Reinhard Grindel is the only candidate for a further European place, which has a two-year term.

(Additonal reporting by Polina Devitt in Moscow; Editing by Nick Mulvenney/John O'Brien)

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