World Aquatics extended its suspension of Paolo Barelli by an additional year on Thursday, with the former LEN President now facing a three-year ban.
Barelli, the President of the Italian Swimming Federation (FIN), was initially suspended for two years in November for the alleged wrongdoing in three separate cases, including multiple rule violations of the FINA Constitution and the FINA Code of Ethics.
This included claiming and accepting undue payments and failing to report a conflict of interest to the Ethics Panel, according to World Aquatics. His specific violations included:
- The unilateral signing of an addendum to a contract between LEN and FIN that would benefit the latter by between € 500,000 and € 1,500,000
- The claiming of expenses totaling € 495,587.22 from the Italian Olympic Committee, on behalf of FIN, despite these already having been paid by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance. This was found by the appeal chamber of the Italian Court of Auditors to have caused pecuniary damages.
Now, the World Aquatics Ethics Panel has opted to hand Barelli a new one-year ban that will commence at the end of his current suspension on Sept. 14, 2024.
Barelli was also ordered to repay all of the undue payments he received. The one-year ban could be extended if he has not repaid what he owes to World Aquatics by Sept. 14, 2025.
The suspensions restrict Barelli from taking part in any aquatics-related activities under the auspices of World Aquatics or any of its members, making him ineligible to run the Italian Swimming Federation.
Barelli has responded to the extension of suspension, disputing the claims and vowing to take the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Barelli was the other candidate for the presidency of World Aquatics (then FINA) when current president Hussain Al-Musallam won the right to lead the governing body.
FINA about as clean as FIFA
That’s why Middle Eastern and South Asian nationals are always at the head of FINA/WA, because those are the countries with the most aquatic sports prowess!! /s
Hahaha! Exactly, the most corruption
Haha! Can the captain of corruption even swim?
Barelli is made a scapegoat for all FINA deviancy. I hope he counter fires
World Aquatics President is a corrupt man
Documents show US investigation of 2 Kuwaitis in FIFA case (usatoday.com)
It’s really obvious he’s corrupt and he behaves like a dictator too
Hopefully Barelli has got some juicy dirt on the current FINA bigwigs, especially the corrupt President. I am sure they have been dirty together for years
Laughable. The leader of World Aquatics personifies corruption himself
Why doesn’t WA take the same serious measures against some of their current Bureau members? Zhou Jihong for instance was clearly behaving corruptly at Tokyo 2020 but she gets off with a little smack on the hand.
Its clearly all about the money
Clearly they are willing to discipline people who have been previously in their high ranks. But only when they are already outside FINA. They try to look good. Like ice cream with shit underneath
It’s not rocket science.
Is Barelli probably corrupt? Yes. Are they all probably corrupt? Yes.
What’s the difference with Barelli? He was the only person that provided any challenge to Al-Musallam’s iron grip on the entire world of aquatics.
Captain corruption needs to be sunk
He and Sam Ramsamy are the pits of the world