The world football governing board FIFA has slapped the former Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) Referees’ Committee secretary-general, Obert Zhoya, with a five-year ban from all football activities.
This comes after Obert Zhoya was found guilty of sexually harassing three female officials.
Apart from being struck with a five-year ban, Zhoya has also been fined 20,000 Swiss francs (£17,600).
Convicting Zhoya, Fifa’s independent ethics committee said that the evidence was sufficient enough to charge Zhoya guilty.
“The adjudicatory chamber of the independent Ethics Committee has banned Mr Obert Zhoya, former secretary general of the referees’ committee of the Zimbabwe Football Association (Zifa), from all football-related activities for a duration of five years, after having found him guilty of abusing his position to sexually harass three female Zifa referees,” reads a statement from Fifa on Thursday.
“Upon careful analysis of the written statements of the victims as well as the various evidence collected during the investigations conducted by the investigatory chamber, the adjudicatory chamber was comfortably satisfied that Mr Zhoya had breached art. 23 (Protection of physical and mental integrity), art. 25 (Abuse of position) and, by corollary, art. 13 (General duties) of the Code of Ethics.”
FIFA added:
“FIFA has a strict stance against all forms of abuse in football, and the Ethics Committee handles all such cases in line with the Code of Ethics, taking into account the specificity of each. FIFA also provides a confidential, dedicated, highly secure and web-based whistle-blowing system so that individuals can report any safeguarding concerns.”
Allegations of sexual harassment against Zhoya were initially reported back in 2020, but the local board led by Felton Kamambo was reluctant to solve the matter. The Felton Kamambo-led board was even accused of failing to handle the case since it involved other ZIFA officials.
After ZIFA failed to solve this case, the allegations were sent to Fifa, the Confederation of African Football (CAF), and the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations.
Before delivering the final verdict, FIFA initially referred the case to CAF some three months back.
This was confirmed by Fifa’s chief social responsibility and education officer Joyce Cook who said that Fifa had no capacity to investigate the case and judge such conduct during that particular time.
Despite the matter taking very long to be solved, the final judgement was, however, delivered with Zhoya being handed a five-year ban from all football activities and fined 20,000 Swiss francs.-iharare
