Our finance department prevented us from paying Kwame Bonsu's fee to Kotoko - Esperance Vice President

Vice President of Tunisian giants, Espérance Sportive de Tunis, Walid Arem has revealed the reason why they refused to pay Asante Kotoko for Kwame Bonsu's transfer fee after asking them to provide their account details.

The winners of the 2018/19 CAF Champions League backtracked on their decision to pay a sum of $150k to Kotoko for the services of Kwame Bonsu following the intervention of a Portuguese lawyer who was representing the Porcupines at the time.

According to Mr. Walid Arem, they refused to make that payment because they were informed by their account department about a FIFA ruling in 2016 which instructs the Ghanaian club to pay $180k to them for signing Emmanuel Clottey who had a binding contract with Esperance without their consent.

In an interview with the Kumasi based Nhyira FM, Mr. Walid said ” The day we signed a contract with Kwame 'Conte', we asked our finance team to pay Kotoko but the finance department told us that we cannot pay them(Kotoko) because we have a FIFA ruling which states that Kotoko should pay us $180k."

“Therefore, since the fee for Kwame Bonsu was $150k, Kotoko is supposed to refund a sum of $30k to us and that is why we didn't pay any amount to Kotoko.”

Meanwhile, Kotoko has secured the services of former Hearts of Oak general manager, Ashford Tetteh Oku to help them recover Bonsu’s transfer fee from Esperance.