Ghana match-fixing claims threaten to cast a shadow over World Cup

The Ghana Football Association has been accused of entering into an agreement to fix international friendlies together with an agent registered with Fifa and an official involved in overseeing the country’s under-20 team. The allegations were made by the Daily Telegraph and Channel 4, which conducted a six-month joint investigation after receiving a tip that criminal gangs were looking to work with football associations to rig friendlies. [caption id=“attachment_1584497” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational Image. Reuters[/caption] The Telegraph claims to have filmed Christopher Forsythe, the agent, and Obed Nketiah, who sits on the management committee of the under-20 team, making promises to negotiate a deal with the Ghana FA to organise matches for which they would provide the referees. The referees would then ensure the result would go a pre-determined way. Reporters from the paper together with a former Fifa investigator posed as representative of an investment company who wanted to sponsor games. They met with Forsythe and Nketiah, who claimed to be able to grease the palms of pliable officials, who would make sure Ghana took place in the fix games. According to the story, “the president of the country’s football association then met the undercover reporter and investigator, along with Mr Forsythe and Mr Nketiah, and agreed a contract which would see the team play in the rigged matches, in return for payment “The contract stated that it would cost $170,000 (£100,000) for each match organised by the fixers involving the Ghanaian team, and would allow a bogus investment firm to appoint match officials, in breach of Fifa rules.” When asked how they could be sure the matches would be fixed, Forsythe said: “We will always choose associations/countries that we think we can corrupt their officials for all our matches.” According to the Associated Press, Ghana’s football association has denied the allegations and called in the police to “investigate two persons for misrepresenting the GFA with an attempt to defraud." The Ghana federation says no contract was signed and “the two gentlemen did not make such corrupt offers.” The Guardian reports that Forsythe and Nketiah have also denied the claims. “These are false allegations and I will never in my life do such a thing,” Nketiah said. While no players have been implicated in the investigation, the allegations threaten to cast a shadow on what has been a very exciting World Cup so far. They also follow revelations by Fifa that it was monitoring the World Cup warm-up game between Scotland and Nigeria for suspicious activity and a New York Times’ story, based on a leaked Fifa report, that at least a handful of matches had been fixed in the build-up to the 2010 World Cup. The depth of fixing in football was revealed by Wilson Raj Perumal, a convicted match-fixer, who wrote a book about his experiences fixing games while in prison. Read the full Telegraph story here.