FIFA President, Gianni Infantino, has reiterated his plans to tackle corruption and ensure transparency in world football.
The footballing world has recently been marred by some corruption scandals, including one involving former FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, and Infantino says steps are being taken to curb this.
Speaking at a press conference during his one-day visit to Ghana, Infantino revealed that FIFA has introduced a new article in its regulations ordering every football association to publish its accounts on a yearly basis.
Infantino says that this new directive will ensure good governance and transparency at the highest levels of football.
He went on to disclose that failure to do so will result in no funding from the world football governing body. “Transparency is a crucial part of what we are implementing.
We have introduces two articles into the FIFA statutes. One deals with the associations, and the other deals with the confederations.”
“We have put for the first time in the history of FIFA, some concrete requirements of what a national association should have in terms of good governance and transparency.”
“These criteria which were nonexistent are now in the statutes of FIFA, and FIFA is obliged to monitor and check that these are put into place.”
“We have a team in place within the FIFA administration in charge of Africa, whose task is to verify and check that all these requirements are met. Funding from FIFA is based on some concrete criteria that have to be fulfilled.”
“One of these criteria is the publication of accounts of the association. This must be public, this must be open. Everyone must know where the money is coming from and where the money is going.”
“This will be monitored and checked by FIFA, and if this does not happen the association will not get the funding from FIFA.”
“So I think this is an important tool for us to be able to make sure that good governance and transparency are put in place at the national associations,” he added.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
