Ex-Indian official banned for accepting payment at AFC election

ZURICH (Reuters) - The All India Football Federation's former general secretary has been banned for accepting a payment during Asian Football Confederation (AFC) elections in 2009, FIFA's ethics committee said in a statement on Thursday. Alberto Colaco was found to have breached five articles of the FIFA ethics code during the AFC Congress in May 2009, when elections were held for one of the Asian places on the FIFA executive committee. Colaco was banned from all football activity for three years by ethics committee's adjudicatory chamber headed by German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, the statement said. "Mr Colaco accepted a payment in the context of the elections for the FIFA Executive Committee at the AFC Congress in May 2009....while he was serving as the General Secretary and voting delegate of the All India Football Federation," said the statement. The statement said the election was "won narrowly" by Mohamed Bin Hammam, who was later banned for life over a cash-for-votes scandal in the run-up to the 2011 FIFA presidential election in which he had planned to stand. FIFA said that Colaco violated ethics code rules on general conduct; duty of disclosure, co-operation and reporting; conflicts of interest; offering and accepting gifts and other benefits; and bribery and corruption. (Writing by Brian Homewood; editing by Justin Palmer)