MI­A­MI–Caribbean Foot­ball Union head, Gor­don Der­rick, has been barred by foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA, from run­ning for CON­CA­CAF pres­i­dent, af­ter fail­ing an in­tegri­ty check.

An­tiguan Der­rick was one of three of­fi­cials bid­ding for top post along with Cana­di­an Soc­cer As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent, Vic­tor Mon­tagliani and Bermu­da Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion chief, Lar­ry Mussenden, but FI­FA an­nounced Tues­day he could not pro­ceed as a can­di­date.

"The Au­dit and Com­pli­ance Com­mit­tee has con­clud­ed that one can­di­date, Mr Gor­don Der­rick from An­tigua & Bar­bu­da, could not be ad­mit­ted as a can­di­date for the of­fice of CON­CA­CAF Pres­i­dent nor FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent nor the FI­FA Coun­cil," Chair­man of the FI­FA Au­dit and Com­pli­ance Com­mit­tee, Domeni­co Scala, said in a state­ment.

"For pri­va­cy rea­sons we are not in a po­si­tion to go in­to fur­ther de­tails with re­gard to this de­ci­sion. The per­son con­cerned has been in­formed."

The de­vel­op­ment will come as a blow to Der­rick who last Feb­ru­ary an­nounced his in­ten­tions to run for the top post in the trou­bled North, Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean con­fed­er­a­tion.

And he had been hop­ing to be one of the can­di­dates head­ing in­to the elec­tions at CON­CA­CAF Or­di­nary Con­gress sched­uled for May 10 in Mex­i­co City.

Those elec­tions will be con­duct­ed by CON­CA­CAF's Ad Hoc Elec­toral Com­mit­tee and mon­i­tored by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of FI­FA's Au­dit and Com­pli­ance Com­mit­tee, along with their le­gal de­part­ment.

Der­rick has served as CFU pres­i­dent for the last four years, af­ter re­plac­ing Trinida­di­an Jack Warn­er in 2012, fol­low­ing the cash-for-votes scan­dal which rocked Caribbean foot­ball.

Re­gion­al of­fi­cials were ac­cused of tak­ing cash in­duce­ments of US$40 000 in re­turn for votes for FI­FA pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mo­hamed bin Ham­mam back in 2011.

Fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions by FI­FA, Der­rick was one of sev­er­al of­fi­cials rep­ri­mand­ed and fined over "ap­par­ent vi­o­la­tions" of its ethics code.

CON­CA­CAF is at­tempt­ing to re­cov­er fol­low­ing yet an­oth­er cor­rup­tion scan­dal which claimed elect­ed pres­i­dent Jeff Webb and his re­place­ment, Al­fre­do Haw­it.

Webb, who was ar­rest­ed and charged last year, sub­se­quent­ly plead­ed guilty to charges against him, and is cur­rent­ly await­ing sen­tenc­ing in June.Haw­it on Mon­day al­so plead­ed guilty to bribery and con­spir­a­cy charges.

CON­CA­CAF's pres­i­dent au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be­comes a FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent and a mem­ber of FI­FA's pow­er­ful ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee.–CMC