ZURICH, Switzer­land – Haiti foot­ball fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Yves Jean-Bart was banned from the sport for life yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing ac­cu­sa­tions of sys­temic sex­u­al abuse of fe­male play­ers.

The FI­FA ethics com­mit­tee found Jean-Bart guilty of “hav­ing abused his po­si­tion and sex­u­al­ly ha­rassed and abused var­i­ous fe­male play­ers, in­clud­ing mi­nors”.

He was al­so fined one mil­lion Swiss francs (US $1.1 mil­lion).

Jean-Bart has de­nied the al­le­ga­tions, which in­volve na­tion­al team play­ers. The ac­cu­sa­tions were first re­vealed by British news­pa­per, The Guardian in April.

The abuse is said to have hap­pened at the coun­try’s na­tion­al train­ing cen­tre at Croix-des-Bou­quets, which FI­FA helped fund. It was known as “The Ranch”.

As the head of Hait­ian foot­ball since 2000, Jean-Bart “wield­ed huge pow­er…and has high-lev­el con­nec­tions in­to the gov­ern­ment, po­lit­i­cal and le­gal sys­tems,” Hu­man Rights Watch said.

Hait­ian state au­thor­i­ties have been urged by the ad­vo­ca­cy group to in­ves­ti­gate the al­le­ga­tions and pro­tect the play­ers, who al­so said they were in­tim­i­dat­ed and threat­ened.

CMC