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Robson Sharuko Senior Sports Editor
ZIFA might be reeling on the verge of bankruptcy but the association blew more than $2 million in FIFA funds, including $522 000 that was requested for Women, Youth, Five-A-Side and Beach Football but never used for these programmes — between 2010 and 2014.
Another $1,5 million paid to fund the Goal Project.
The country’s football controlling body is staggering under the weight of a debt which has ballooned from about $660 000, in March 2010, to about $7 million today.
Ironically, ZIFA’s financial woes have worsened at a time when the association has received $800 000 in accumulated bonuses to add to the regular injections of, on average, $250 000 per year, from FIFA.
What is of interest, though, is that — for the first time — we can publish the breakdown of what the funds were requested for and we can reveal that, in the majority of the cases, the funds that came from FIFA in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, were not used for their intended purposes.
Alarmingly, there is a possibility that FIFA could have been blinded by fake ZIFA audited statements — cooked by the association’s officials — to enable the world football governing body to release the funds given that the officials in Zurich insist that audited financials are a must before they can disburse such funding.
That this could be done, consistently, for a period of about five years, with FIFA being duped that ZIFA were, indeed, using the requested funds for the intended purposes and, crucially, the possibility of fake audited statements being generated, and provided to back that, could turn this into a very huge scandal.
This probably explains why there has been a reluctance, on the part of the ZIFA officials who have been running the association’s finances since 2010, to hand over the financial records to the board member, in charge of finance, Ben Gwarada, since he was voted into office in March last year.
FIFA strengthened the reporting requirements of the member associations, when it comes to the Financial Assistance Programme, through the following:
• Local FIFA development programme audit
• Auditing of latest annual accounts (statutory audit report) as presented to the general assembly of the member association
• The member association must provide FIFA with the minutes of its latest general assembly
• All FIFA transactions are channelled through the FIFA programme account in the name of the member association or confederation
• The auditor has to check and confirm that the beneficiary holder of this bank account is the member association
But there are a lot of loopholes that some associations have been taking advantage of and the first ZIFA audited financial statements, covering the period from 2010 to 2013, were only released last year and raised a stink, after showing that more than $700 000 could not be accounted for.
That audit report also questioning a number of the transactions made by the association.
The Herald is now in possession of all the requests that came from ZIFA to FIFA from 2010 to 2014, the breakdown of the requests and what the world football governing body paid into the local organisation’s coffers during that period.
We also have in our possession the Goal Project funds that came from FIFA into this country and were used to pay for various projects.
The material is all contained in an official FIFA audit that was done by the world football governing body’s auditors, KPMG, during that period.
The official documents show that ZIFA received more than $3,5 million in FIFA funds from 2010 to 2014, with more than $2 million of that coming in the form of the FAP funds, and bonuses, paid in 2010, 2011 and 2014 bringing in a cool $800 000.
But it’s the other requests, and what the funds were eventually used for, which make the reading of the breakdown quite interesting, if not very controversial.
For example, between 2010 and 2014, ZIFA received $124 000 for Youth Football from FIFA in tranches of $30 000 (2010); $27 500 (2011); $20 000 (2012); $20 000 (2013) and $26 500 (2014).
However, ZIFA officials will find it impossible to justify any investment, even worth $1, which they injected into Youth Football in the period between 2010 and 2014 when the domestic youth football structures virtually col- lapsed.
But, to get FIFA to provide funds, year after year, the ZIFA officials provided supporting documents, backed by audited financial transactions, which showed that they, indeed, poured the requested funds into the country’s dormant Youth Football structures.
That, on its own, shows the extent of this mighty web of deceit.
Women’s Football has turned into a contentious branch of domestic football, leading to the controversial suspension of the game’s leader, Miriam Sibanda, after a huge fallout with the ZIFA chief executive, Jonathan Mashingaidze.
That fallout had its roots in the FAP Funds that come from FIFA.
Sibanda was unhappy that funds, meant for Women Football, were not channelled into that branch of the game, since she came into office last year, and repeatedly raised this issue not only in parliament but also among visiting FIFA officials.
“Fellow board members, how many times did you allow our all-too powerful general secretary to cower you into silence when I tried to make you see that his attitude towards women’s football belonged in the Stone Age,” Sibanda wrote, in an e-mail, to fellow board members in February this year.
“By your silence you allowed the ZIFA CEO to lie, under oath in Parliament, about disbursement of FIFA FAP Funds and the welfare of the Mighty Warriors in camp.”
That letter, more than anything else, shows a culture where it became fashionable for ZIFA to possibly lie to FIFA, let alone the local parliamentarians, about how the funds that were coming from Zurich were being used.
The documents show that Women Football received a huge chunk of the FIFA funds, amounting to $172 000 in the past five years, through identical tranches of $37 500 in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014 while there was an injection of $22 000 in 2013.
Interestingly, according to the documents, the men’s competition only received $25 000 in those five years while a massive $110 000, distributed in tranches of $30 000 (2010); $24 000 (2011); $12 000 (2012); $20 000 (2013) and $24 000 (2014); was poured into the ZIFA accounts.
A further $94 000, in tranches of $25 000 (2010); $25 000 (2011); $7 000 (2012); $12 000 (2013) and $25 000 (2014) came into the ZIFA accounts for refereeing while $61 000, in tranches of $15 000 (2010); $25 000 (2011); $5 000 (2012); $7 000 (2013) and $9 000 (2014) was injected from FIFA for the domestic medical fraternity.
A further $26 000, in tranches of $10 000 (2011); $6 000 (2012) and $10 000 (2014); was paid by FIFA into the ZIFA accounts for Five-A-Side and Beach Football and, as has become the norm, nothing was injected into those structures.
A whopping $249 000 in tranches of $72 500 (2010); $54 500 (2011); $45 000 (2012); $42 000 (2013) and $35 000 (2014), was wired from FIFA into the ZIFA account for “Planning and Administration” while another $16 000 was given for “Event Management” with $6 000 coming in 2013 and $10 000 coming in 2014.
Event Management, of course, only started to feature among the ZIFA requests in 2013 and it’s unclear what that money could have been used for.
FIFA poured $53 500 towards “Infrastructure” in tranches of $12 500 (2010); $15 500 (2011); $10 000 (2012); $6 500 (2013) and $10 000 (2014) while, ‘OTHERS’, got $68 000 in tranches of $22 500 (2010); $22 500 (2011); $9 500 (2012); $9 500 (2013) and $4 300 last year.
There have been reports that ZIFA have received more than $800 000 this year alone and a further $1 million could be on the way.
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