Egypt: Issa Hayatou fined 24.5 million euros

Issa Hayatou, former president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), and his former secretary general Hicham El Amrani were each sentenced to 500 million Egyptian pounds (about 24.5 million euros) fine, decided the Economic Court of Cairo this November 26, 2018, according to local press. The Cameroonian and Moroccan were judged in Egypt for having signed in 2016 a contract on media rights / marketing of African football with the French company Lagardère Sports.

Is this the epilogue of a judicial file that started in January 2017? On November 26, 2018, Issa Hayatou and Hicham El Amrani were each fined 500 million Egyptian pounds (about 24.5 million euros), two years after the former president of the African Confederation of Football (CAF) and its former Secretary General have been implicated by the Egyptian authorities.

Their supposed fault? In September 2016, sold the management of marketing rights and the media of African football for the period 2017-2028 to the French company Lagardère Sports (LSE) against a billion dollars.

The Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) had ruled that this contract violated the law in Egypt, where CAF's headquarters are located. The case was then sent to the Cairo Economic Court (CAC) in March 2017 which, after several postponements, opened the trial of the two former leaders in April 2018.

A contract being renegotiated

According to the Egyptian press, it is in the absence of Cameroonian and Moroccan that the CAC has made this verdict which will probably not be applied. The Court considers that the signing of the deal between CAF and LSE does not meet several legal principles in Egypt.

An Egyptian company, Presentation Sports (PS), had notably tried to compete with Lagardère in 2016. PS had felt that it had been kept out of any call for tenders. This was strongly opposed by the former leadership of the Confederation of African Football, stressing that it had entered into exclusive negotiations with LSE in June 2015.

In April 2017, Ahmad Ahmad, frankly elected head of the CAF, after defeating Issa Hayatou, had himself criticized the agreement passed by his predecessor and former opponent. The Malagasy had then obtained that the CAF and Lagardère renegotiate the contract ratified on September 28, 2016.