GFA spent $420,000 on the Ghana-Egypt world cup qualifier

The Ghana football Association spent over $420,000 as an unclassified payment in the 2014 World Cup qualifier against Egypt, according to a document chanced on by Ghana Sports Newspaper at the Ministry of Youth and Sports.

The ministry's expenditure for the 2013 fiscal year said Ghana spent $400,000 on unclassified payment and $16,000 on indemnity payments during the Black Stars home and away matches with the Pharaohs of Egypt during the campaign.

When the Black Stars hosted Zambia in Kumasi for instance, $100,000 and $16,000 were used as unclassified and indemnity payments for the match which Ghana won 2-1 to take control of the group.

Against Sudan at home and away, $100,000 was spent on unclassified payment where as $85,000 plus $14,000 were used for unclassified and indemnity payments for the matches with Lesotho.

Overall, GHANA spent over $700,000 on a strange items described as "unclassified and indemnity payments" on the Black Stars qualifiers for the abortive Brazil 2014 World Cup campaign.

The amount, which the ministry says was paid directly to the General Secretary of the Ghana Football Association, has been unexplained by the Association, raising several critical questions about the lack of transparency of the under-fire Ghana FA.

Under the Unclassified payment, there also an item only explained as an “Indemnity Payment" which the GFA explains are paid to match officials for unexplained reasons.

Youth and Sports minister Nii Lante Vanderpuiye, recently revealed to the press how the state has to cough over USD$1 million for a single Black Stars game, the minister further questioning the rationale behind most of the items prepared by the Ghana FA for the national team matches.

And to buttress the minister's revelation, a budget document of the GFA chanced on by Ghana Sports Newspaper indicates that the GFA has over the years been receiving variant amounts itemized in the Budget as "Unclassified Payment", which the ministry say was received by a top GFA officer who defined the money as one for "contingencies".

The document said that the essence of the unclassified payments in the qualification of the Black Stars to the World Cup was not clear and beneficiaries are still not known, similar to the case of the popular $577,500 co-efficient payment.

The unclassified payment has been treated as an unaccountable imp rest, and in the instances of the Black Stars 2014 World Cup Qualifying matches, the then General Secretary of the GFA, Emmanuel Gyimah signed for them with an authority note from the GFA president.

In an interview with a staff of the ministry on condition of anonymity, he described various items in several of the GFA budgets as a waste of limited resources and said there is no justification for the "Unclassified Payment" of such huge amounts without accountability.

He further stressed that such payments without accountability are prone to misappropriation, abuse and enriching of individuals.