by A former Afghanistan international who has been banned for life from football has claimed that his coach and the president of the country’s football federation forced him to send emails to a known match-fixer in an attempt to fix the result of the parties.
Mohammad Salim Israfeel Kohistani accused FIFA of dismissing his allegations that he was ordered to send emails by former AFF president Keramuddin Keram and Keram’s successor Mohammad Kargar, who previously served two stints as coach of the senior men’s national team. emails to Wilson Raj Perumal to organize the results of the matches against Nepal and Sierra Leone in the 2008 Merdeka tournament.
Kohistani was one of eight players found guilty of match-fixing in 2019 by FIFA after an extensive investigation into a series of international matches that “Perumal attempted to manipulate for betting purposes.” But he has claimed that Keram and Kargar were involved in the plot.
“I wrote all the emails, but they were all over me telling me to do it,” he told The Guardian. “I had no choice.” The emails [from Perumal] He said if you accept what we say, each player will receive between $2,500 and $10,000 for the AFF for each game. At first he didn’t know that he was talking about match-fixing, but he translated the message to Keram and Kargar and they said, “Okay, we’ll send you a list of the players.” I told them we shouldn’t do this and they said, ‘Just think about your family and no one will get hurt.'”
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Kohistani has also alleged that Keram, who was banned for life from football in 2019 after sexually abusing female players, and Kargar attempted to fix several other matches, including the final of an under-23 tournament in Bangladesh and one of the first international matches. of the women’s team. . “I wrote many emails to [Perumal] but only I was punished,” he said.
Kargar denied the allegations as “baseless” and said he had been the victim of “reputation assassination.” “They want to tarnish the name of Afghan football,” he said. Keram did not respond to questions from The Guardian.
Last month, several former players who participated in the 2008 Malaysia tournament accused Kargar, AFF president since January 2019, of working with Perumal and Dan Tan to fix the results of matches against Nepal and Sierra Leone. Tan was described in 2013 by Interpol as head of the “world’s largest and most aggressive match-fixing syndicate”, but he denies any wrongdoing.
FIFA was urged this month to reopen its investigation into allegations of match-fixing against Kargar by a group of Afghan players who are boycotting the national team in protest of his continued involvement amid previous corruption allegations against him. .
Kohistani claims he met Perumal in India, two months before the tournament in Malaysia, during a meeting in his hotel room when Kargar was also present, a fact Kargar disputes. “Since I could speak some English, Kargar asked me to talk to Perumal and [Perumal] He said he came from the Malaysian Football Federation and wanted to invite us to play in a tournament,” Kohistani said. “When we returned to Afghanistan, Kargar called me and told me to come to the AFF office. Keram was there too.
“They told me to write an email to Perumal and I asked them why I had to use my email address. They said I could create a new address which was salimkohistani@hotmail.com but they kept the password. So I started writing the emails and every day they wanted to stay in touch with him. They called me at the federation only to send another email and then I would leave again. He was only 21, so he didn’t really know what was going on.”
Kohistani admitted that he was aware of the alleged plan when Afghanistan faced Nepal, which ended in a 2-2 draw. He and several other players have claimed that they heard Kargar giving instructions to concede a goal after taking calls on his mobile phone.
“I remember our coach had a phone on the touchline and then he would give instructions to the defenders to concede a goal,” Kohistani said. “One of the players is now a coach in Afghanistan, so he couldn’t say anything about what happened. “If they say something, they know they could be in danger.”
Several overseas-based players, including former captain Djelaludin Sharityar, refused to play for Afghanistan in protest over alleged match-fixing, but Kohistani, who played for local team Kabul Bank, says he was warned to remain silent about what happened. . “We were all under enormous pressure; if we said anything, we knew they could kill us,” he said.
In April 2019, Kohistani was living in Denmark and playing for third-division side Vejen Sportsforening when he received a letter from FIFA informing him that he had been banned for life.
“I didn’t even know they had been under investigation,” he said. “I contacted them to ask why they had not spoken to me and they told me that they had sent many emails to the same email address that Kargar and Keram gave me. No one from the AFF had ever contacted me and they told me that they had lost contact with me, which was not true.”
FIFA denies this and says it tried to contact Kohistani through the Danish Football Association. According to the ruling of his ethics committee, seen by The Guardian, Perumal asked Kohistani if he could take the Afghanistan women’s team to an unspecified tournament and was told: “I have spoken to them and they are okay with your operation.” [sic] cooperate with you.” It was on this basis that he was found guilty. He was also accused of trying to fix matches in an under-16 tournament called the Lion City Cup and senior men’s matches against Malaysia in 2009 and Bangladesh in 2010 and 2011.
Kohistani appealed FIFA’s decision, arguing that he “was never able or in a position to decide on the composition and results of the national team” and “acted only as an intermediary between (…) Mr. Kargar and the so-called football agent.” ”. Mr. Perumal.” He said he “was not aware at the time of the seriousness of the guilt.”
The appeal was dismissed by FIFA’s appeals committee after it was decided that “there are no grounds to conclude that the appellant had been forced or threatened to communicate with Mr Perumal between 2008 and 2011 in the context of the activities of match fixing”. However, he also said that “it appears that Mr Kohistani may not be the only player involved in match-fixing activities and therefore strongly recommends FIFA initiate further disciplinary investigations.”
That has not yet happened and Kohistani has since written to FIFA again asking for the investigation to be reopened.
“How is it possible that only one person is banned?” he said. “I don’t understand how they can think that a player who is only 21 years old can make these types of decisions without anyone from the Afghan Football Federation being involved. I have never said that I didn’t write the emails. But I didn’t have access to that email account and that was my only role. “I just wanted to play football and have a career.”
He claims his family has been threatened since his television appearance in Afghanistan in early December, when he detailed many of the allegations against Kargar and Keram.
“They tried to find my family so they could catch me,” he said. “I heard from my brother who still lives in Afghanistan: they had to find another place to live. “We are very scared about what could happen.”
