[ 2015-11-24 ]

Kwesi Nyantakyi, banker and a lawyer, head the Ghana FA

Ghana FA Ranked Among The Most Corrupt FA’s In The World
A new report from Transparency International says
most of FIFA’s 209 member associations
publish little or no information about how they
spend millions of dollars from world
football’s governing body. Highlighting the
potential for corruption, the study into the
governance structures of the federations questions
what the FAs do with the more than $1m they each
received from FIFA in 2014.

Among the findings: 168 federations, including the
Ghana Football Association, do not make financial
records publicly available; and 85% of FAs publish
no activity accounts of what they do.

According to the report by the Global
anti-corruption body, the Ghana football
Association scored ZERO, in all four categories of
the 2015 Football Governance League Table.

The Report says Ghana, Burkina Faso, Gabon,
Comoros, Eritrea and Algeria are amongst the worst
run Associations in Africa.

Egypt scored in three out of the four categories,
representing Africa’s highest in terms of
the level of transparency.

Transparency International looked at how FAs
account for their activities based on the
information publicly available on each FA’s
official website. They chose four basic areas of
information drawn from a work on the Business
Principles for Countering Bribery in small and
medium-sized enterprises and Transparency in
Corporate Reporting.

These methodologies were developed to identify
best business practice for countering corruption.

Scoring was split into four categories, and a
point was given for each of the following

Financial accounts

Organisational statutes or charter

Annual activity report

Code of conduct or ethics

The study reveals that the Ghanaian FA scored zero
in all four categories of the transparency index.

Other

Only 14 out of the 209 FAs – Canada,
Denmark, England, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan,
Latvia, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway,
Portugal, the Republic of Ireland and Sweden
– publish the minimum amount of information
to show what they do and how they spend their
money.

FIFA says the money is for football development.
But other than a partial accounting on the FIFA
web site, there is no clear way to track what the
FAs did with all that money.

81 per cent of FAs have no financial records
publicly available

21 per cent of FAs have no websites

85 per cent of FAs publish no activity accounts of
what they do

Transparency International looked for what
information is publicly available on the websites
of the activities and expenditures of the 209 FAs
and six regional Confederations. We wanted to find
out how transparent they are about the money they
receive from FIFA and their other revenues. Many
of the FAs and the confederations have income from
sponsors, broadcasting licenses, ticket sales,
international matches and other sources in
addition to the funds for FIFA. While they
prominently display the logos of their sponsors on
their homepages, little to no information is
provided on the value of these deals and
activities. We also sent emails to all 209 FAs
asking them for links to the information because
many websites are hard to navigate and the
information hard to find1 . Only fourteen out of
FIFA’s 209 football associations.

Transparency International researched FA websites
to source details about financial accounts,
governing statutes, codes of conduct and annual
activity reports.

“The risk of corruption at too many football
associations around the world is high,” said
TI director Cobus de Swardt.

“This problem is made worse by the lack of
information such as audited financial statements
by many associations.

“FIFA needs to enforce better governance on
its members as well as on itself. The good that
football can do is tarnished when corruption is
allowed to flourish.

With the five-man race on to replace Sepp Blatter
as FIFA president after months of crisis and
scandal at the federation, Swardt added:
“Any incoming president of FIFA must make it
a priority to create more accountable governance
throughout the organizations from the bottom, as
well as from the top.”

He said world football’s six confederations
could also improve. Only two publish financial
accounts – UEFA and African
football’s ruling body.

TI has made a series of recommendations to FIFA.
It calls for the world federation to mandate all
its members to make publicly available the
following information as a pre-requisite for
membership and financial assistance: audited
financial accounts, an annual activities report,
code of conduct and organizational statutes.

The anti-corruption body also wants FIFA to make
easily accessible all charters and annual activity
and financial reports of associations on its main
website, while the confederations are urged to
publish financial accounts and codes of conduct on
their websites.

The International Centre for Sport Security
described the new research as “a damning
indictment on financial transparency in
football”, saying it was a timely
examination of the level of financial and
functional transparency in global football
governance.

Source - Ghana Sports Online

... go Back