The pow­er strug­gle with­in Con­ca­caf has deep­ened even fur­ther with Bar­ba­di­an Lisle Austin claim­ing he was back at the head of the em­bat­tled con­fed­er­a­tion af­ter gain­ing a court in­junc­tion in the Ba­hamas on Fri­day. Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from Austin, the High Court in Ba­hamas grant­ed a pro­vi­sion­al in­junc­tion which pre­vents Con­ca­caf's ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee from in­fer­ring with his role as act­ing pres­i­dent. Con­ca­caf's Statutes es­tab­lish the Ba­hami­an cap­i­tal of Nas­sau as the head­quar­ters of the Con­fed­er­a­tion and clas­si­fies the or­gan­i­sa­tion as "a Ba­hami­an not-for-prof­it cor­po­ra­tion." A week ago, Austin was sus­pend­ed from act­ing as pres­i­dent fol­low­ing a de­ci­sion by the ma­jor­i­ty of the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee who ac­cused him of vi­o­lat­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion's stat­ues.

Foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body, Fi­fa, on Thurs­day ex­tend­ed the ban to in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball ac­tiv­i­ties. "I am grat­i­fied but not sur­prised by yes­ter­day's or­der," Austin said of the in­junc­tion. "I have stood firm in my be­lief that I right­ful­ly suc­ceed­ed to the Act­ing Pres­i­den­cy of Con­ca­caf and (the) or­der af­firms my be­lief." Austin, a Con­ca­caf se­nior vice-pres­i­dent, was ap­point­ed to lead the con­fed­er­a­tion af­ter sit­ting pres­i­dent Jack Warn­er was sus­pend­ed by Fi­fa's ethics com­mit­tee pend­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to bribery al­le­ga­tions. The start of Austin's tenure was sig­nalled by the at­tempt­ed sack­ing of gen­er­al sec­re­tary Chuck Blaz­er and the an­nounce­ment of a foren­sic au­dit of Con­ca­caf's fi­nances over the last five years.

Last Sat­ur­day, a state­ment is­sued from Con­ca­caf's New York-based of­fices an­nounced that Austin had been "pro­vi­sion­al­ly banned from all foot­ball ac­tiv­i­ties with­in Con­ca­caf" fol­low­ing a meet­ing by ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­bers Hon­duran Al­fre­do Haw­it, Mex­i­can Justi­no Com­pean, Ariel Al­vara­do of Pana­ma and Amer­i­can Sunil Gu­lati. Austin con­tend­ed then, and again on Fri­day, that the meet­ing had been il­le­gal as on­ly the pres­i­dent was au­tho­rised to call and chair ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee meet­ings. He said he would now re­fo­cus his en­er­gies to putting Con­ca­caf on a sound foot­ing. "My ef­forts to lead the Con­fed­er­a­tion in­to a new era con­tin­ue again to­day (Fri­day)," Austin stressed. "The rogue fac­tion at­tack­ing Con­ca­caf from with­in can­not in­ter­fere with our love of this sport and our pur­suit of re­form and trans­paren­cy."

It was Blaz­er's re­port to Fi­fa de­tail­ing charges of bribery com­ing out of a meet­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go last month that sparked the Fi­fa in­ves­ti­ga­tion and led to the sus­pen­sion of Warn­er and Asian foot­ball chief Mo­hamed Bin Ham­mam. Bin Ham­mam and Warn­er have been ac­cused of of­fer­ing cash bribes to Caribbean Foot­ball Union fed­er­a­tions in ex­change of vot­ing for Bin Ham­mam in the Fi­fa pres­i­den­tial elec­tions ear­li­er this month. The in­cum­bent Sepp Blat­ter was re­turned un­op­posed af­ter Ham­mam pulled out of the race.