FIFA Freezes Funding To OFC
Audit revealed ‘potential irregularities’ in football centre project
Zurich: Fifa has frozen funding to the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) after construction costs for an Auckland football centre went millions of dollars over budget.
Fifa had agreed to put $13.3 million (FJ$19.9m) towards the OFC Home of Football - a sports facility which has been under construction since 2013 in the Auckland suburb of St Johns.
OFC - Fifa’s umbrella organisation for Pacific nations - was also contributing $6.7m (FJ$10m) to the project. A Fifa spokesperson said it had temporarily suspended funding to OFC after an audit revealed “potential irregularities” in the construction process of the Home of Football.
New Zealand Football president and OFC board member Deryck Shaw said Fifa was still providing OFC with funding for operational activities but a funding freeze was in place for the Home of Football “and other things”.
Meanwhile, an Auckland consulting firm, which marketed itself as project managing the Home of Football, restricted access to its website late last week. 3 Dimension Consultants former director and shareholder Emily Oakley has also removed references to project managing the OFC Home of Football from her Linkedin profile.
Following the Fifa-commissioned audit OFC president David Chung quit. His resignation came just months after Tai Nicholas quit as OFC general secretary. Stage one of the Home of Football, which includes two international-sized artificial football fields, practice turf, warm up turf, toilets, flood lights, car parking and landscaping, was initially estimated to cost $5.3m (FJ$7.9) but as of 2016 costs had blown out to $12.8m (FJ$19.1m).
The two fields are not listed as having Fifa-accreditation despite that being a condition which OFC promised to deliver on when negotiating a lease with Auckland Council.
Auckland Council agreed to give OFC a 30-year lease in return for building the facility at Ngahue Reserve however, the lease has not been formalised.
OFC’s 2016 financial statements showed $3.1m (FJ$4.6m) had been spent on stage two taking the total cost of the project to $15.9m (FJ$23.7m).
Stage two, was to include an OFC office, sports club, changing rooms, cafe, gym and more car parking but Auckland Council ordered OFC to stop work after it found “significant discrepancies” between the approved work and the proposed work.