[ 2014-06-29 ]

$3M Was To Stop Player Agitations—Prez Mahama
Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama has told
Bloomberg News, flying $3 million to the nation's
soccer team was 'necessary' even as a defender
filmed kissing the cash helped send the team out
of the World Cup with an own goal.

Mahama, whose government relied on the central
bank to pay its bills last quarter, sent a jet
with more than $3 million to Brasilia to prevent a
possible boycott of yesterday's game against
Portugal.

Defender John Boye can be seen kissing a stack of
money in a hotel after it arrived by armed escort,
according to Rio de Janeiro-based Globo TV.

Boye scored an own-goal in the game yesterday as
Ghana, whose team is known as the Black Stars at
home, lost 2-1.

'I believe valuable lessons were learned by all,'
Mahama said in an e-mailed response to questions
from Bloomberg News. 'There was a problem with the
initial mode of transportation for the payment and
so we made other arrangements that, while
unconventional, were necessary.'

The Black Stars' behavior off the field
overshadowed its three games in Brazil.

The Ghana Football Association denied it had
agreed to fix future international exhibition
games, suspended two of its top players for
fighting and downplayed the threat of a boycott of
the Portugal game.

The London-based Daily Telegraph reported this
week that two men offered the association's
president a bribe to help fix matches.

The football association suspended Sulley Muntari
of AC Milan and Kevin-Prince Boateng, who plays
for FC Schalke 04 in Germany, for fighting with
Coach James Kwesi Appiah and other squad
officials.

Giving All
'I don't think you can place that many human
beings together in a team, all of them stars in
their own right, and not have some measure of ego
display and some amount of discord,' Mahama said.
'Our elimination at this stage is not for lack of
talent or effort. The Black Stars have given their
all.'

Ghana tied three-time World Cup champion Germany
2-2 and lost to the U.S. 2-1 in its other two
group games. In the last World Cup in South Africa
four years ago, it reached the quarterfinals
before losing to Uruguay on penalty kicks.

The sight of a cavalcade with police support
ferrying the cash to the hotel where Ghana's team
was staying wasn't a good image, said Jerome
Valcke, secretary general of soccer's governing
body FIFA.

It would have been better to do it 'in a normal
way, which means a bank transfer,' Valcke told
reporters in Rio de Janeiro.

The payday for Ghana's soccer players comes as the
country's economy is struggling.

Growth will ease to the slowest pace since 2009
this year because of power shortages, a slumping
currency and falling commodity prices, the
International Monetary Fund said last month.

The central bank financing of the budget deficit
led Fitch Ratings to warn of even higher inflation
in a country that already has one of the highest
rates in the world.

Source - Businessweek.com

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