PETALING JAYA: Asian Football Confederation (AFC) secretary-general Datuk Seri Windsor Paul has stressed that the passport scandal involving Timor-Leste and the alleged document forgery case linked to Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) are fundamentally different and should not be treated as comparable precedents.
He said the punishment imposed on Timor-Leste cannot automatically be applied to the Malaysian case because the circumstances surrounding both incidents are not the same.
“In the Timor-Leste case, the competition had already ended when the offence was discovered. We found that documents had been falsified and that 12 ineligible players were fielded across multiple matches,” Windsor said.
“Logically, when a competition has already ended, you cannot punish retrospectively; you have to punish going forward. Since the tournament was over and they had already failed to qualify, there was little point in applying retrospective sanctions.
"That is why the committee banned Timor-Leste from participating in the next edition of the competition.
“With Harimau Malaya (Malaysia), the situation is completely different. The matter was discovered while the competition was still ongoing.
"You cannot equate the Timor-Leste case with FAM because the circumstances are not the same. We must allow the Disciplinary Committee to examine the facts and act accordingly.”
Timor-Leste’s football scandal involved the large-scale falsification of birth or baptismal certificates for 12 Brazilian-born players, who were wrongly registered as Timorese to represent the national team.
The deliberate document fraud resulted in fines from FIFA, match forfeitures and the expulsion of the team from the 2023 AFC Asian Cup.
Windsor added that the AFC Disciplinary Committee must operate strictly within the powers granted under their regulations.
“The committee cannot make arbitrary decisions. They can only act within the authority granted under the disciplinary code - no more, no less,” he said.
“This is because all decisions made by the disciplinary committee can be appealed. They can be challenged before the appeals committee and ultimately taken to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
“If a punishment is excessive or goes beyond their authority, it will be appealed. They do have powers, but those powers are strictly confined to the code.”
