Two prominent international footballers from Sierra Leone have gone to the High Court in Freetown accusing the Sierra Leone Football Association, SLFA and the Ministry of Sport in the government of Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma of defaming them and “making unfounded claims of match-fixing” against them. They are asking the court to award them three million United States dollars in damages.
Papers filed by their lawyers and seen by Politico quote, Ibrahim Koroma and Samuel Barlay who play club football in Europe as saying that they were invited to play for Sierra Leone against South Africa in 2008 and that the match ended in a goalless draw after “they gave one of their best performances” for their country. Six years later, the “match-fixing” allegations were made against them and they were suspended from playing for Leone Stars.
The lawsuit notes that the footballers lost reasonably lucrative contracts with reputable European clubs “which effectively posed a serious dent on their career pending the investigation of match-fixing allegations against them respectively.”
According the writ issued by Edrina Chambers in Freetown the SLFA and the Ministry of Sport failed to set up a “legally constituted committee to look into the allegations of match-fixing against the Plaintiffs … On 8th December 2020, long after their indefinite suspension by the defendants and the Ministry of Sports, both Plaintiffs were unequivocally discharged of all allegations of match-fixing without compensation for their respective loss of earnings.”
The writ says the SLFA and the Ministry of Sports were informed about the dismissal of the allegations of match-fixing by the Ethics Committee of the SLFA but they failed to respond to letters written to them describing that as a “complete disregard for the Plaintiffs and their career prospects.”
Neither the SLFA nor the Ministry of Sports has responded to the coming High Court case.
Johansen is on record as telling a parliamentary committee that despite not being able to prove those match-fixing allegations; she used them as “trump cards” against “people in the Rodney Michael camp” to win the election of 2013.
This lawsuit comes as the SLFA prepares for its Elective Congress which was due to take place in Makeni last week but was postponed indefinitely by the organization. The SLFA issued a statement saying that its judicial bodies need more time to study and respond to petitions against candidates running for positions in the Executive Committee.
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