KINGSTOWN, St Vin­cent – For­mer pres­i­dent of the St Vin­cent & the Grenadines Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion Venold Coombs has agreed to pay the sport’s world gov­ern­ing body, FI­FA US $1,200 a month to sat­is­fy the US $40 000 fine im­posed on him five years ago.

FI­FA al­so banned Coombs from all foot­ball-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties – ad­min­is­tra­tive, sports or oth­er­wise – glob­al­ly for two years at the same time it im­posed the fine.

He was fur­ther fined US $40,000 for sell­ing 2014 World Cup tick­ets at a “prof­i­teer­ing mark-up”.

FI­FA im­posed an ad­di­tion­al six-month ban in Au­gust last year, which elapsed in March this year, for Coombs’ fail­ure to pay the fine.

Otashie Spring, pres­i­dent of lo­cal club, SV Unit­ed said at a news con­fer­ence that Coombs reached out to FI­FA on mul­ti­ple oc­ca­sions this past Sep­tem­ber, con­cern­ing his sta­tus.

Spring, who is al­so the first vice-pres­i­dent of SVGFF, said FI­FA in­di­cat­ed that the ban had elapsed, but the fine was still out­stand­ing.

“They … then re­quest­ed from him, cor­re­spon­dence that with­in his own pref­er­ence to ba­si­cal­ly present a pay­ment plan as to how he is ex­pect­ed to ba­si­cal­ly set­tle that out­stand­ing pay­ment,” Spring said at a news con­fer­ence, which Coombs al­so at­tend­ed.

Spring said Coombs and FI­FA agreed that the pay­ment will be made over 36 months.

“…At least for 35 of those pay­ments, it would sum up to a month­ly pay­ment of US $1 200,” Spring said. “Pay­ments ba­si­cal­ly would have been made, so is in com­pli­ance with re­spect to the plan as ap­proved by FI­FA.”

Spring said cor­re­spon­dence from FI­FA sug­gest­ed that Coombs’ ban was not linked to the fine and that the for­mer SVGFF pres­i­dent was free to re­sume all foot­ball-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

He and Coombs ac­cused the SVGFF of sup­press­ing in­for­ma­tion from FI­FA that the for­mer pres­i­dent could re­turn to all foot­ball-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

CMC