Wilfred Kwaku Osei, popularly known as Palmer, has paid 22,000 Swiss Francs to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on behalf of the Ghana Football Association (GFA) for his disqualification from presidential elections appeal case to be heard.
The payment was made to the financial department of the world sports tribunal on Tuesday, to set a date for his appeal to be heard.
Last week, Joy Sports reported the GFA failed to pay their part of the advance cost for hearing as requested by CAS.
The Finance Director of CAS, Miguel Abelairs wrote to him to foot the remainder of the bill or have the case thrown out.
Team Palmer initially wrote to CAS requesting for an extension of time as they deemed the two weeks window ‘too short a time’ to raise the money.
However, they paid the money two days before the close of the deadline handed to them.
With the payment made, CAS would set a date for the hearing in the coming days.
Whereas Osei Kwaku would be represented by his lawyer, Thaddeus Sory and judge on the three-man Arbitration panel, John Didulica – a former member of the FIFA Dispute Resolution Chamber, the GFA would be represented by Naa Odofoley Nortey at a fee of $35,000.
The judge of the FA on the three-judge CAS panel is, Hendrik Willem Kesler, famous for his role in upholding the ban of Turkish star Hakan Çalhanoğlu in 2016.
Naa Odofoley Nortey was a member of the now-defunct Normalisation Committee / Elections Committee that disqualified Palmer in October last year.
In the FA’s defence filed by Naa in November 2019, IT Manager Francis Essah and Frank Davis of Davis Law were named as witnesses.
The two are expected to appear before the CAS panel and testify the wrongdoing of Palmer to merit his disqualification.
Lawyers of the FA in their defence argued that ‘Wilfred Osei Kwaku and Tema Youth are same because he has control over the Club as Executive Chairman.’
They added that he was disqualified because he is ‘guilty of conflict of interest as per art 19 of FIFA Code of Ethics’ because Tema Youth owed the GFA which he sought to head as President.
Team Palmer feel they were mistreated and appealed at CAS to ‘nullify the elections.’
Source: Joy Sports
