A financial statement the now defunct Normalisation Committee (NC) presented to the Ghana Football Association (GFA) Congress for review did not include a crucial page – and somehow, no member of Congress noticed.
Joy Sports checks show that majority of members of Ghana Football Association Congress and Executive Council (ExCo) were even unaware that portions of the financial statement presented to them last year were unavailable.
It is for this reason that the ExCo has not made any efforts to demand answers on the over ¢5.2 million unaccounted for by the Committee.
Some ExCo members acknowledged not noticing the missing parts of the financial statement when contacted by Joy Sports.
Techiman City FC owner Charles Kwadwo Ntim, popularly known as Micky Charles, told Joy Sports his attention was drawn to the omission of page 22 of the financial statement recently.
“One of my colleagues told me one of the pages of the financial statement was missing so I had to go through again because it was sent to us electronically. It was when I went through that I realised, indeed, a page was missing,” he told Joy Sports.
On whether he reached out to address what he had noticed, he said he “never reached out to any one at the ExCo.”
Joy Sports has made efforts to understand the questions surrounding the financial statement. Attempts to reach some members of the Normalisation Committee (NC) for answers proved futile as they would not respond to text messages nor emails.
Background
The financial statement of the GFA for June 2019 revealed the NC spent ¢10,441,460.80 million during their tenure.
The statement lumped the figures together in four thematic areas, notably, football governance, football competition expenses, administrative governance, and maintenance and running expenses.
A total of ¢3,533,850.47 was spent on football governance. Whereas ¢296, 493.98 was spent on maintenance and running expenses, administrative governance and football competition expenses consumed ¢4,369,590.12 and ¢2,241, ¢526.23 respectively.
These figures amounted to ¢10,441,460.80 which is the total expenditure of the NC.
However, ¢5.2 million of that money has not been accounted for in the statement presented to Congress in December 2019.
It would be recalled that Wilfred Kwaku Osei, popularly known as ‘Palmer’ in an interview with Joy Sports revealed that page 22 of the financial statement from the Committee is missing.
Joy Sports careful study of the statement noted that the pages of the financial statement are from page 1 to 23, but page 22, is mysteriously missing as noted by Palmer.
Many believe page 22 contains ‘Directors emoluments and other expenses’ as was the practice under the previous administration, but this financial statement does not have the emoluments of the directors, ie, Dr Kofi Amoah, Lucy Quist, Naa Odofoley Nortey, Dua Adonten (who was later replaced by Samuel Osei Kuffour).
“We all missed it,” an ExCo member who spoke on condition of anonymity said before adding “I can’t believe everyone at Congress didn’t notice that the directors emoluments was not in the financial statement; no one raised it on the floor of Congress,” he said.
Officials could not explain why directors emoluments were not captured in the financial statement.
Page 21 of the statement contained what is described as ‘administrative expenses’ on which the NC spent on twenty different items ranging from competitions to donations.
On competition expenses and awards, the Dr Kofi Amoah led team spent ¢734,541.23 during their tenure.
Other expenditures include:
• Match Commissioners and Referees allowances – ¢1,427,710.00
• Referees travel and accommodation – ¢79,275.00.
• Clearing charges – ¢128,394.69.
It is unclear what the NC cleared, raising concerns over the lack of breakdown of this expenditure.
The highest spending of the Committee was on friendly matches – an amount of ¢1,800,000.
These friendly matches are also unclear, as it was not stated whether these monies were spent on Black Queens, Black Stars, or any of the other national teams.
An amount of ¢141,508.90 according to the interim administrators was the share of transfer and registration fees to GHALCA and RFAs, while ¢29,000 paid for advertising and promotion.
Also, ¢36,630.90 was for Communication and Media.
Annual subscription fees of the GFA to FIFA, CAF and WAFU cost the association ¢65,727.53 while depreciation took ¢483,824.50 of the FA’s money.
Furthermore, the Committee made donations worth ¢185,052.91. In their activities, the financial charges on the FA amounted to ¢22,836.68.
They coughed ¢70,963.98 for players travel and accommodation, ¢25,947.50 was for a share of sponsorship and ¢3,562 for catering services at games.
An amount of ¢11,207.30 was used for ‘ticket printing’. It is unclear the printing institution the Normalisation Committee engaged to print tickets as it has not been spelt out and for which competitions.
A compendium of these figures will amount to ¢5,223,346.44, raising questions how the NC spent ¢10,441,460.80 and what the remainder of the ¢5,218,114.34 was spent on.
Source: Muftawu Nabila Abdulai/ Joy Sports
