The Ghana Football Association (GFA) on Wednesday refuted reports suggesting that Ghana bribed its way to secure qualification for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.
A leaked document has revealed that the Ghanaian government paid ‘bribes’ in 2014 to aid the Black Stars’ qualification to the World Cup in Brazil, a report by a local tabloid Ghana Sports Newspaper said.
The report claimed the leaked document from the Sports Ministry disclosed that the government made 420,000 U.S. dollars unclassified payments which the newspaper described as ‘bribe’ to secure a place for Ghana at the global soccer event where the country performed poorly.
But the GFA has described the report as palpably false saying neither it nor the government have budgets for bribes or condone bribery in any form.
In a statement copied to Xinhua, the GFA said such utterly wrong suggestion denigrates the hard work and achievements of the Black Stars players, culminating in the historic and indisputable 7-3 aggregate victory over Egypt that secured Ghana’s place at the World Cup.
“The Black Stars players, technical team and management worked hard to secure Ghana’ s place at the World Cup and as always we will continue to win our matches through fair means,” it said.
“While urging the media to be responsible in their reportage, we will not hesitate to use the right legal channels available to us to seek redress over such false reports in future,” the GFA added.
The government is yet to response to the allegations.