Former president of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Football Federation, Venold Coombs has agreed to pay FIFA US$1,200 a month to satisfy the US$40,000 fine imposed on him in 2018.
In 2018, FIFA, football’s world governing body, banned Coombs from all football-related activities — administrative, sports or otherwise — globally for two years.
He was further fined US$40,000 for selling 2014 World Cup tickets at a “profiteering mark-up”.
FIFA imposed an additional six-months ban in August 2022, which elapsed in March 2023, for Coombs failure to pay the fine.
At a press conference in Kingstown on Monday, Otashie Spring, president of SV United, told the media that Coombs reached out to FIFA on multiple occasions in September, as it concerns his status.
Spring, who is also first vice-president of SVGFF but said he was not speaking in that capacity, said that 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 told the press conference, which Coombs also attended and spoke at.
He said Coombs and FIFA agreed that the payment would be made over 36 months.
“… at least for 35 of those payments, it would sum up to a monthly payment of 1,200 US dollars,” Spring said, adding, “Payments basically would have been made, so is in compliance with respect to the plan as approved by FIFA.”
Spring said the correspondences from FIFA suggested that Coombs’ ban was not linked to the fine and that Coombs could resume all football-related activities.
He and Coombs accused the SVGFF of suppressing information from FIFA that Coombs could return to all football-related activities.