This weeks IFAF Congress in Helsinki was terminated after only 38 minutes after 40 of the 64 member Federations decided not to attend. The Congress had been intended to run for 2 days on 4th and 5th July.
The absentees included most of EFAF’s member countries.
The IFAF executive has been under pressure on a number of fronts in recent weeks. Firstly, the International Olympic Committee refused to allow IFAF’s application for recognition to go to a vote.
Secondly, in recent days, CAS has given a judgement in a case taken to challenge the outcome of the 2012 Congress in Texas. While IFAF was successful in this action, CAS did highlight the “lack of intelligibility of the IFAF Statutes” and “a questionable conduct of the IFAF Congress in July 2012” and consequently ruled that IFAF should share the costs of the case. It appears that the official English translation of IFAF’s Statutes, which the EFAF countries had relied upon in their appeal, did not accurately reflect the French version (which is the primary version as IFAF is registered in Paris) thus contributing to the reasons why the matter was appealed to CAS.
Separately, IFAF has also come under pressure to reveal the undisclosed recipient of a €87,000 ‘loan’ which appeared in its recently published 2012 audited accounts.