Ghanian Football Association (GFA) president Kwesi Nyantakyi resigned on Friday just hours after world football governing body FIFA hit him with a 90-day suspension over corruption claims.<\/p>\n
In a statement carried on the GFA website, Nyantakyi apologised \u201cunreservedly\u201d for \u201ca series of errors of indiscretion\u201d after FIFA launched an ethics investigation into his activities.<\/p>\n
Nyantakyi was accused in an explosive documentary called \u2018Number 12\u2019, aired on Wednesday by investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas, of soliciting bribes amounting to several million dollars.<\/p>\n
The football chief said \u201cscammers\u201d had \u201cdeceived me into thinking they were genuine persons interested in investing in our country\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the documentary, he was accused of requesting $11 million (9.3 million euros) from reporters posing as investors to secure government contracts.<\/p>\n
He also allegedly tried to profit personally from a $5 million-a-year, five-year sponsorship deal with the GFA.<\/p>\n
Hidden camera footage also purportedly showed referees taking as little as $100 each to rig matches.<\/p>\n
Ghana\u2019s government on Thursday said the documentary had exposed \u201cgross malfunctioning\u2026 characterised by widespread fraud, corruption and bribery\u201d at the GFA.<\/p>\n
Ghana\u2019s information minister Mustapha Abdul-Hamid said the government would dissolve the GFA because of the \u201cwidespread nature of the apparent rot\u201d.<\/p>\n
FIFA responded earlier on Friday by banning Nyantakyi from \u201call football-related activity\u201d for 90 days pending an investigation with a possible further suspension of up to 45 days.<\/p>\n
Football is Ghana\u2019s national sport and the revelations have sent shockwaves through the country, just under a week before the start of the World Cup finals in Russia, for which they failed to qualify.<\/p>\n
Before the last World Cup in Brazil in 2014, Nyantakyi was accused of signing a $170,000-deal for Ghana to play in a friendly organised by match fixers. He denied the accusations.<\/p>\n
AFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ghanian Football Association (GFA) president Kwesi Nyantakyi resigned on Friday just hours after world football governing body FIFA hit him with a 90-day suspension over corruption claims. In a statement carried on the GFA website, Nyantakyi apologised \u201cunreservedly\u201d for \u201ca series of errors of indiscretion\u201d after FIFA launched an ethics investigation into his activities. Nyantakyi […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[258,862,147,861,863],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-corruption","tag-football","tag-ghana","tag-kwesi-nyantakyi","tag-resigns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1019,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions\/1019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theblogonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}