Wigan Athletic chairman Dave Whelan was banned from all soccer-related activities for six weeks on Wednesday over offensive comments about Jews and the Chinese.
The 78-year-old Whelan, who accepted a Football Association (FA) charge of racially-aggravated misconduct, has also been fined £50,000 (US$78,000), warned about his future conduct and ordered to undertake a mandatory education course.
“It is clear that he himself is very upset by the words he used and he moved very quickly to apologize publicly, plead guilty and begin to make amends,” the FA commission report said in an excerpt released by Wigan.
Whelan has seven days to accept or appeal against the sanction, which would be suspended until after the outcome of an appeal process. The ban would begin immediately if he decides to accept the punishment.
The offensive comments were made in a newspaper interview defending his decision in November last year to appoint Malky Mackay as the second-tier club’s manager.
Mackay himself is still being investigated by the FA over a dossier of alleged racist and anti-Semitic text exchanges with a colleague while managing Cardiff City.
Mackay acknowledged the leaked exchanges were “completely unacceptable, inappropriate” and the League Managers Association said they were “disrespectful of other cultures.”
Commenting on a text about Jewish people and money, Whelan told the Guardian: “I think Jewish people do chase money more than everybody else. I don’t think that’s offensive at all.”
Whelan also said there was “nothing bad” about one of Mackay’s alleged exchanges featuring a term widely perceived as being insulting toward the Chinese.
Whelan is a former player who was forced to retire early because of injury and then started amassing wealth through a chain of supermarkets and sports stores, enabling him to finance the purchase of Wigan.
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