Former Rukh player Lassana Faye joined the Yellow and Blacks in January 2022. However, at the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he left the club's location without playing in official matches.
Subsequently, Faye unilaterally terminated his contract with Rukh and went to court, where he asked to recover from the club the amount of compensation in the amount of 316 thousand euros and 5% per annum and to satisfy his other claims. The Dispute Resolution Chamber of the FIFA Football Tribunal has already delivered its verdict in this case.
In particular, Lassana Faye's claim was partially satisfied, with the amount of compensation reduced by approximately 13 times - EUR 24 thousand and 5% per annum on this amount. The Chamber dismissed all other claims.
In turn, the club will comply with the decision and pay the appropriate amount in favour of Lassana Faye. At the same time, Rukh still has the option to collect a contractual penalty from Lassana Faye - USD 500,000 for unilaterally terminating his employment contract with FC Rukh without good reason.
Volodymyr Lapitsky, FC Rukh's sporting director: "The decision of the FIFA Court of Arbitration has once again demonstrated the dismissive, arrogant and unfair attitude of this organisation towards our clubs, our football and the country as a whole. Remember the stories with Shakhtar's former players. And now imagine: we signed a contract with the Dutch footballer Lassana Faye on 9 January 2022, paid his agent's fees, paid the player's salary for January in full and the player flew with the team to a training camp in Turkey. The team returned from the training camp on 21 February 2022 and began preparations for the first spring match. And then the war broke out. Faye, like all other foreigners, left the club and Ukraine and returned home. After that, he hasn't been in Ukraine for a single day, hasn't played a single minute for our club, and is filing a lawsuit against FIFA's DAC demanding that we pay him 316,000 euros.
Naturally, we were shocked by this audacity and our lawyers got involved in the process. But imagine our surprise when we received the FIFA CAS Decision, in which the Chamber acknowledged that the player had unilaterally terminated his contract with Rukh, and our club, in return, was obliged to pay the player an additional €24,000. In other words, the player has not played a single minute for the club, unilaterally terminates the contract, and the football justice body punishes our club and imposes a transfer ban. It looks like some kind of absurdity. But we have this situation and we will build on it. It is clear that we have no choice but to pay the player in accordance with the FIFA CAS decision in order to lift the transfer ban. And we will do so in the near future. And then we plan to file a counterclaim against the player with the same Chamber demanding that Faye be punished for unilaterally terminating the contract. Our contract with the footballer provides for compensation for unilateral termination of the contract.
This is the strange and unpleasant situation we have with the player and the world's highest football governing body. We hope that now the FIFA CAS will not contradict its previous decision, in which it acknowledged that the player had unilaterally terminated his contract with our club, and will take the side of the club."