FIFA Council member Constant Omari arrested for corruption

FIFA Council member Constant Omari has been arrested on suspicion of corruption and was being held Wednesday in a public prosecutor’s office in his home country of Congo and questioned for alleged involvement in embezzling money.

Omari, who is also a vice-president of the Confederation of African Football, was arrested on Tuesday night on the orders of Luzolo Bambi, Congo President Joseph Kabila’s special adviser on corruption.

Omari, the president of the Congo soccer federation, was arrested along with two other federation officials and a government sports ministry official. They were still being detained Wednesday and questioned at the public prosecutor’s office at a court building in Kinshasa.

The four were being questioned on suspicion of embezzlement of money given to the federation by the government to fund the Congo national team and various Congolese clubs playing in competitions across Africa, according to a statement from Bambi’s office.

Bambi’s office also said a fifth person wanted for questioning, the president of the Congo Olympic committee, is on the run. Bambi’s office asked the Congolese public “to kindly lend a hand to justice” by helping to catch the missing Olympic committee official.

The arrests of Omari, federation vice-president Theobald Binamungu, federation chief financial officer Roger Bondembe and sports ministry secretary general Barthelemy Okito come weeks after a public disagreement between the soccer federation and the government over $1 million the federation asked for to help fund its teams and set up matches. The government said the amount was exorbitant.

The 60-year-old Omari was elected to the FIFA Council in 2015, one of seven Africans on the 37-member board headed by FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Already a member of CAF’s executive committee, he was promoted to become one of two vice-presidents of the African confederation last year.

The Congolese league suspended all games until further notice in reaction to the arrests and in a show of “solidarity” with Omari and the two other federation officials. The league said they had been “humiliated and unjustly deprived of their liberty.”