We paid $100k to stop Number 12 screening – Nyantakyi’s wife

Mrs. Christine-Marie Nyantakyi, the first wife of former GFA boss Kwesi Nyantakyi has admitted that her husband paid $100, 000 in a desperate bid to stop the public screening of the Number 12 documentary by Anas Aremeyaw Anas.

“Well, there’s information, and there’s truth in that information. Apparently, we became so desperate when we realized that all that they presented to us were false, so we tried to make some interventions, and they proposed that he pays some money.

“They proposed $150,000; my husband couldn’t afford it, so he gave out $100,000 dollars, and they came back to him and said the person says you need to add $50,000, and he said well, I don’t have it; that’s all that I have,” Nyantakyi said on Metro TV’s Good Evening Ghana show on Tuesday.

Mrs. Nyantakyi, however stated that the amount was paid back in two tranches after the documentary which has effectively damaged her husband’s career was screened.

“They brought $40,000 first; and then later on, they brought $60,000 dollars. I have not gathered the courage to watch the full video, because the small that I watched, I knew that the way he is talking; that is not my husband; something might have gone wrong.”

Nyantakyi was banned for life by the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA’s Ethics Committee following the airing of the investigative piece by the ace journalist.

A release from FIFA stated that during this time, Mr Nyantakyi is banned from all football activities at both national and international level (administrative, sports or any other). The ban comes into force immediately.

Mrs. Nyantakyi speaking for the first time since the whole saga started added that his husband is pained and has been wondering what the motive was.

“His worry and the bother is what the motive was; so he tried to find out from people why did they do that? The motive for somebody planning, plotting, strategizing and executing this just to make sure he’s disgraced. So that has been his pain and worry; he doesn’t mind at all whatever has happened; he has taken that in good faith, but each day he keeps asking what have I done wrong? If they wanted me out they could have found another way; but that scheming to that extent.”

Background

Nyantakyi, came under scrutiny in June this year following an undercover investigation done by Ghanaian journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas between 2016 and 2018.

Nyantakyi was captured on videos negotiating a deal with businessmen and accepting a bribe of $65,000 to help establish an oil business in his native country.

Also, he was filmed while negotiating how to create a fake agency to pocket 20 per cent of a supposed five-year sponsorship deal for the Ghana Premier League worth $15 million. He would’ve been $3.7 million richer if everything had gone as planned.

Nyantakyi, who was in his third term in office before he resigned, became Ghana FA boss in December 2005, after succeeding Dr. Nyaho-Nyaho Tamakloe.