Sports News of Monday, 27 May 2019

Source: mynewsgh.com

Kwesi Nyantakyi, GFA Exco Members, cleared of corruption after GFA accounts audit

Kwesi Nyantakyi is former President of Ghana Football Association Kwesi Nyantakyi is former President of Ghana Football Association

A forensic audit conducted by FIFA on the Ghana Football Association (GFA) has found no acts corruption or financial impropriety on Kwesi Nyantakyi during his tenure, reports claim.

The audit conducted on the orders of the world governing body six months ago also cleared members of the Executive Committee of the GFA of any acts of malfeasance.

The FIFA auditing officials, who spent about one month in Ghana investigating the financial affairs of the federation, discovered that neither corruption nor embezzlement took place at the GFA.

The audit report concluded that the Ghana FA has only ‘perception issues’ to deal with since media reports of corruption within the federation are ‘wide off the mark’, the report said.

However, the FIFA auditors recommended that the slim accounts office staff must be boosted while modern accountancy software used by some federations like the South African FA must be acquired by the Ghana FA to ease the workload.

The audit report has been made available to the Normalisation Committee of the GFA for about two months now but it is not known why it has so far been kept secret from the public.

The report will come as a huge relief for Nyantakyi and the Executive Committee of the Ghana FA as there were suspicions of corruption within the federation.

Since Nyantakyi left office, Ghana football has suffered some paralysis as the Normsalisation Committee has struggled to meet the expectations of the football fraternity.

This is also a boost for the former Ghana FA boss in his fight to clear his name after the sting operation by Anas Aremeyaw Anas made allegations of corruption against him.

The forensic audit was sparked by Nyantakyi’s resignation from his position as the President of the Ghana FA in the wake of an undercover investigation that claimed he took bribes.

Nyantakyi resigned his Caf and Fifa posts but claimed the footage had been doctored to falsely incriminate him.

Despite that the adjudicatory chamber of Fifa’s ethics committee banned him for life from “all football-related activities at both national and international level”.

The former Ghana FA chief has taken the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport where he is challenging the FIFA decision.

He has also sent Anas to court in Ghana claiming the violation of his human rights and also seeking damages for defamation.