Swiss Federal Supreme Court Judgment of 3 March 2025
Motion to set aside CAS Award TAS 2021/A/8388 of 4 December 2024
This case forms part of several FIFA’s wide-ranging ethics proceedings after allegations of systemic sexual abuse within the national football federation of Haiti started in 2020 (see also my note on another related case here). During the investigation, a vice-president of that federation (the Official) was identified as a potential perpetrator and provisionally suspended. In July 2021, FIFA’s adjudicatory chamber issued a life ban and a CHF 100,000 fine, finding that he had committed repeated acts of sexual harassment, abuse, coercion and misuse of authority against women referees over several years. A three-member CAS panel confirmed the violations of the FIFA Code of Ethics, upheld the lifetime ban, and reduced the fine to CHF 35,000, relying in particular on the consistent testimony of a protected victim, supported by additional corroborating evidence.
The subsequent motion to the SFT included primarily allegations of violation of the right to be heard (Art. 190 para. 2 (d) PILA). The Official claimed that the CAS failed to justify its refusal to hear 11 other alleged victims, relied improperly on anonymous testimony, and prevented him from effectively contesting the allegations. He further asserted a breach of procedural and substantive ordre public (Art. 190 para. 2 (e) PILA), contending that the award was based solely on unverified anonymous statements and that it was “arbitrary” to impose a lifetime ban based on the testimony of a single alleged victim.
The SFT dismissed this grievance, considering that the CAS had sufficiently explained why additional witness hearings were unnecessary: the facts deemed proven through the principal victim’s testimony – supported by corroborating evidence from another protected witness and a journalist – were already sufficiently serious to decide the case. The SFT further noted that the CAS had implemented appropriate safeguards for anonymous witnesses (voice distortion, identity checks, supervised questioning) and that the appellant had been able to participate in the examination. Complaints about the CAS’s evaluation of evidence were characterised as impermissible appellate criticisms.
In conclusion, the SFT rejected the ordre public arguments, recalling that neither alleged arbitrariness nor dissatisfaction with the assessment of evidence meets the very high threshold of Art. 190 para. 2 (e) PILA. Anonymous testimony is admissible where procedural protections exist, and the result of the CAS award – upholding a lifetime ban for sexual-abuse misconduct – was not incompatible with fundamental Swiss values. Overall, this judgment confirmed the SFT’s consistent deference to CAS fact-finding in ethics cases and its very narrow approach to reviewing challenges based on procedural fairness and public policy.
