Kuala Lumpur (AFP) – East Timor has been banned from the Asian Cup in 2023 and fined $76,000 for fielding several Brazilian-born footballers with fake documents, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) said on Friday.
The AFC and FIFA investigated the eligibility of a number of East Timor footballers after the AFC Asian Cup UAE 2019 qualifier playoff round matches last year.
The AFC said in a statement it had found 12 Brazilian-born East Timor footballers registered with falsified Timorese birth or baptismal certificates.
“Nine of the footballers participated in a total of twenty-nine matches falling under the jurisdiction of the AFC, and seven matches falling under the jurisdiction of FIFA,” the confederation said in its statement.
The 29 AFC matches in which ineligible players participated have been forfeited.
East Timor has failed to make the final round of the qualifiers for the Asian Cup 2019.
The AFC ordered the East Timor Football Federation’s (FFTL) general secretary Amandio de Araujo Sarmento to be banned from all football-related activity for three years and fined $9,000 for being liable, together with the FTTL, for the falsified documents.
Gelasio De Silva Carvalho, an FFTL official, was fined $3,000 after he “brought the game into disrepute by attempting to interfere with a witness”.
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