Fédération Internationale de Football Association v. Ibrahim Chaibou

Ibrahim Chaibou, a Nigerien international referee who had also officiated two 2010 World Cup qualification matches in Africa in 2009, was found by FIFA's Ethics Committee to have taken bribes to corrupt the outcome of international friendly matches played in 2010 and 2011. The games were arranged through a company called Football 4 U International, controlled by Singaporean match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal and his associate Tan Seet Eng ("Dan" Tan), which national federations could hire to organise a friendly and supply the referee.

Chaibou's favoured method, according to the FIFA investigation, was awarding questionable penalty kicks — often for real or invented handball offences — to steer the number of goals scored in a fixed direction. He refereed South Africa's 5-0 win over Guatemala in Polokwane in May 2010, less than two weeks before the World Cup opened, awarding three penalties for handball, of which South Africa converted two; betting-monitoring agencies flagged a spike in wagers on at least three goals being scored in that match. Days earlier, he refereed South Africa's 2-1 win over Colombia at the reopened Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg, where all three goals came from penalties he awarded. In September 2010, he refereed a 3-0 Bahrain win over what was later discovered to be a fake Togo national team, fielded by Togolese coach Bana Tchanile using impostor players — Chaibou's role that time, according to evidence Perumal gave after his own arrest, was to limit the number of goals scored rather than inflate it. A third fixed match came in June 2011: Nigeria led Argentina 4-0 in a friendly, only for Chaibou to award Argentina a penalty in the eighth minute of injury time for what television replays showed was a handball that had actually struck a Nigerian player's shin, with reports of substantial money placed on Asian betting markets specifically on a fifth goal being scored. Perumal later claimed, in an Al Jazeera documentary titled "Killing the Ball," that he had personally played a part in the qualification of five of the 32 teams that competed in the 2010 World Cup itself.

FIFA's own initial response to the Bahrain-Togo game, when it first came to light, was not to investigate at all, since neither member federation involved had lodged a complaint. That inaction did not hold: the scheme was eventually exposed as part of a wider investigation that also produced separate sanctions against several South African football administrators over the same fixed friendlies — including former South African Football Association (SAFA) president Kirsten Nematandani, against whom FIFA prosecutors sought a six-year ban and a CHF 10,000 fine; former SAFA chief executive Leslie Sedibe, banned five years and fined CHF 20,200; two SAFA referees department officials, Steve Goddard and Adeel Carelse, each banned two years; and SAFA's then head of national teams, Lindile Kika, banned six years. FIFA prosecutors separately recommended life bans for Zimbabwean official Jonathan Musavengana and for Tchanile, who had already been banned domestically in Togo over the fake-team scheme.

FIFA's Ethics Committee found Chaibou guilty and imposed a lifetime ban from all football-related activity, together with a fine of CHF 200,000 (approximately USD 201,000), though it was noted at the time that FIFA's practical power to actually collect the fine from a long-retired referee based in Niger was uncertain. Former FIFA investigator Chris Eaton told the Associated Press that Chaibou "was probably the most corrupt referee the game of football has seen."

The confirmed decision came more than eight years after the matches in question, following an extended investigation into one of the most significant match-fixing scandals in the sport's history — one that ultimately forced FIFA to change its rules for appointing referees to international fixtures. Chaibou retained a right of appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.