JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s sports minister says he has received assurances from FIFA’s ethics committee that it will complete and present a report in June into allegations of match-fixing in the buildup to the 2010 World Cup.
Fikile Mbalula said he met with the chairman of the ethics committee’s investigatory chamber, Cornel Borbely, in Zurich this week to seek clarity on the status of the long-awaited report.
FIFA said as far back as 2011 that it had strong suspicions that some of the South African national team’s warm-up games in the weeks before it hosted the World Cup were fixed. No players were implicated, but referees were suspected of working for convicted match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal and manipulating matches.
Mbalula has previously expressed frustration with FIFA over delays in the investigation.