Why Shohag was banned?: FIFA explains

Despite the heatwave, the whole nation celebrated the Bengali New Year on Friday with utmost zeal and the hope of a prosperous future but had ended up receiving a jolt by the FIFA in the evening.

Bangladesh football had long been heading down a slippery slope and the news -- of Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF)  general seceratary Abu Nayeem Shohag receiving a two-year ban from all football related activities for having violated FIFA's Code of Ethics -- transmitted massive shockwaves across the football and sports fraternity in the country.

The allegations submitted by the Investigatory Chamber (IC) of the FIFA Ethics Committee showed that Abu Nayeem Shohag, in his position as General Secretary of the BFF, misused FIFA Forward funds and negligently allowed the use of forged or falsified documents to support the transactions BFF made with FIFA funds.

Alongside the ban, Shohag was also penalised 10,000 Swiss Franc. Alongside several questionable incidents, the FIFA's 51-page report linked four major transactions.

• The first one involved the purchase of sport wearable goods in June 2000 -- amounting to USD 30,0271 -- for the residential camp in Dhaka and matches of the Bangladesh national football team. The BFF had received three quotations from Sports Link, Sports Corner and Robin Enterprise and Sports Link won the bid. However, IC deduced a number of problems with the quotations received by BFF in relation to the transaction and arrived at the conclusion that those "have not been made by different companies."
• For instance, all three quotations had the same layout with the same format and located signature space, and all quotations misspelled "Outations". Also, the owner of Sports Link appeared to be a former employer of Sports Corner.
• The other three transactions – comprising the purchase of 400 footballs in January 2020 (USS 13,9212), flight tickets in November 2019 (USD 19,9254), lawn mowers in February 2020 (USD 1,412.606) had similar issues like the aforementioned first transaction.
• The IC also analysed the reviews executed for the years 2016 to 2019 as well as the forensic audit conducted by BDO for the years 2017 to 2020 and noted that BFF had continuously failed to observe the requirements included in the FIFA Forward Regulations.
• BDO reported that significant cash withdrawals from FIFA Forward bank account – without relation to the Forward Programme – have been identified and that no documentation or explanation for the purposes of these cash withdrawals was received from the BFF. 
• In the same line, the final report referred to BDO's findings regarding a water pipeline transaction made by the BFF in 2019, which had questionable elements in the quotations from the bidders and the subsequent financial documents.