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Sports Reporter
THE ZIFA leadership yesterday put into motion a process to intimidate Councillors who tried to oust the organisation’s leader, Cuthbert Dube, last month.

This followed a visit to Zurich, Switzerland, last week by Dube, chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze and board member, Tavengwa Hara.

The three ZIFA leaders, who met a FIFA official and discussed the crisis in Zimbabwe football, believed they had been thrust them back into a powerful position by their visit to Zurich.

The meeting was held in the aftermath of the celebrations that followed Sepp Blatter’s re-election as FIFA president.

With Dube declaring, live on Sky Sports just before the election, that he was going to vote for Blatter, the ZIFA delegation felt they needed to feast on the spoils of the Swiss football administrator’s re-election and the role they had played in securing that victory.

However, things took a dramatic twist yesterday when Blatter announced that he was stepping down as FIFA president, saying that he did not have the support of the players and the fans of the world’s biggest sporting discipline.

Reports indicate that about a dozen other FIFA executive committee members and Football Association leaders will be implicated in the huge corruption scandal that has been raging at the world football governing body in the coming days.

The United States investigation, which started with a focus on CONCACAF and South America, will now move to Europe and Africa.

Before the dramatic events in Zurich yesterday, Mashingaidze had already started to flex his muscles by putting the ZIFA machinery, to try and bully Councillors, into motion.

“The Zimbabwe Football Association is in receipt of your letter dated 16th May 2015, on an unofficial letter head, pertaining to the above and hereby acknowledge its contents,” Mashingaidze wrote in a letter to Northern Region secretary-general, Sweeney Mushonga, who chaired that meeting of Councillors.

“The Association has had high-level consultations with Government, COSAFA, CAF and FIFA and would like to bring to your attention that the meeting of the 16th of May 2015 had a lot of unprocedural flaws, which rendered the proceedings of the day null and void.

“The Association hereby requests you as the chairman of the meeting of the 16th May 2015 to favour us with the following documents:

1 Register of the attendees of the meeting

2 Minutes of the meeting

3 Name of ZIFA Secretariat deployed on the day

“Please be advised that the afromentioned documents will assist the Association in compiling a composite report on the meeting of 16th May 2015 for onward transmission to Government, COSAFA, CAF and FIFA.

“The documents should be deposited with the ZIFA Head Office by no later than the end of business on 5th June 2015.”

Mashingaidze copied the correspondence to FIFA secretary-general, Jerome Valcke, Southern and Eastern Africa representative, Ashford Mamelodi, ZIFA boss Dube, his deputy Omega Sibanda, the Board and Assembly members.