Life ban upheld on former Haitian football federation boss

Sport’s highest court on Thursday upheld FIFA’s life ban for sex abuse on a former Haitian football federation director.

Rosnick Grant, the federation’s vice-president in charge of referees, was kicked out of the game by the sport’s governing body in July 2021 for harassment, sexual abuse, threats and coercion against female referees.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) declared the “evidence against Rosnick Grant regarding the sexual abuse charges was sufficiently convincing” to maintain the ban.

“As a basis for its decision, the Arbitral Panel considered the testimony of a victim, who had travelled to Switzerland for the hearing, to be accurate, coherent and credible,” a CAS statement read.

CAS’s ruling comes a month after the Lausanne-based court overturned a similar life ban on Grant’s boss.

In November 2020 FIFA’s Ethics Committee found Haitian federation president Yves Jean-Bart, 73 at the time, guilty of rape and imposed “a life ban from all football-related activities” and a one million Swiss francs ($1.1 million) fine.

Jean-Bart, the head of the Haitian football for two decades, denied that he raped young female players at a training facility outside Port-au-Prince over the course of five years.

He called the verdict a “parody of justice and a purely political measure” and appealed to CAS.

On February 14, CAS annulled the ban, finding the accusations of sexual abuse “inconsistent, imprecise and contradictory”.

FIFA this month announced that it was challenging that decision in the Swiss Federal Court.

The sex scandal in Haitian football was first uncovered by Britain’s Guardian newspaper in 2020, triggering FIFA’s investigation.