French authorities released the head of African soccer's ruling body, Ahmad Ahmad, after several hours' questioning as part of a corruption investigation, a source at the prosecutor's office said on Friday. The 59-year-old president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) was detained by authorities at his hotel in Paris on Thursday but released by the investigating magistrate in the evening, the source told Reuters. That left Ahmad, a former cabinet minister in his homeland Madagascar, free to leave France. "There's no judicial control or home detention," said the source, who is tracking the case. Ahmad was reported to world governing body FIFA's ethics committee by then CAF general-secretary Amr Fahmy in March for alleged corruption and harassment. Fahmy was fired. The allegations followed a string of scandals related to FIFA's practices in Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia in recent years, which have led to the indictment and jailing of numerous senior football administrators. The French source said Ahmad was questioned over accusations of "active" and "passive" corruption, money laundering and belonging to a criminal organization.
