Francisco Egas, on the Byron Castillo case: “The FEF can win the game against TAS in the legal area”

The repercussions of the so-called Byron Castillo case do not stop and according to statements by the president of the Ecuadorian Football Federation, regarding the issue of today’s León de México defender, they will talk for a while longer.

On November 14, Ecuador was the last of the 32 countries that were getting ready to compete in the 2022 World Cup to deliver the official list of the 26 players chosen by coach Gustavo Alfaro to be registered with FIFA. After several hours of discussion, the DT of the National Team accepted the position of the FEF directors: it was a risk to take the defender to the World Cup, Castillo was not part of the World Cup roster.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (TAS, acronym for Tribunal Arbitral du Sport, in French) confirmed that the Tricolor could participate in Qatar 2022. It was decided to analyze the allegations presented by the Chilean and Peruvian federations regarding Castillo’s nationality. However, he announced economic and sporting punishments for national football. In the second aspect, the sanctions will be fulfilled in the qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup with the subtraction of three points for Ecuador.

Ordinary justice, in Switzerland

Egas spoke on the program In the airof Facebook Radio, from Quito, about what Ecuafútbol intends to do regarding the sentence handed down by the TAS. “The Federation, and its legal area, is preparing the reaction or the measures that we must take after the TAS resolution. The resources that we have left are before the Swiss courts for the annulment of that ruling”, said the leader.

Egas confirmed the rejection of the punishment applied: “We believe that we should pursue this path with all our strength because the TAS ruling was ambiguous, without an investigation that would shed anything. It was (applied) based on suspicions and many rights were violated there.”

Regarding the remaining units, the head of the FEF commented: “In the table we will start with less than three points, until this is clarified. It will be necessary to recover them on the court if they cannot be recovered yet in the legal area. But I think we have the right to take that back.”

Regarding the confidence that the sanction will be lifted, Egas said: “We have to go after those three points. In sports we don’t even think about it because we believe that the Federation can win that game in the legal area. We must be prepared to overcome any obstacle.

‘Act of counterfeiting’

Regarding the sanction that the TAS applied to Ecuafútbol by Castillo, that body, the highest instance of sports justice on a planetary level, gave several arguments. This is one of them.

“The FEF violated Article 21 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code by using a document that contained false information. For cases of counterfeiting, FIFA does not refer to national law. Consequently, for FIFA, a decision by the Ecuadorian judicial authorities regarding the falsification of the player’s passport is not necessary to establish that the document is false, in accordance with Article 21 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code. In the present case, although it is true that the player’s Ecuadorian passport was authentic, the information contained in said passport was false. Specifically, the Refereeing Team was convinced that the player’s place and date of birth in the player’s passport were incorrect since the player was born in Tumaco, Colombia, on June 25, 1995. Consequently, the Refereeing Team considers that the FEF is responsible for an act of forgery pursuant to Article 21, paragraph 2 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code, even if the FEF was not the author of the forged document, but simply used it”. (D)