August 2 – The Confederation of African Football has been plunged into internal conflict, not for the first time, after confirming it is investigating allegations of corruption within its secretariat following media claims of serious misconduct by its general secretary Veron Mosengo-Omba.
A CAF statement said it was appointing an international law firm or an international audit and professional services which would report back to its executive committee.
“There is zero tolerance in CAF for corruption or breaching CAF’s internal governance, audit and transparency regulations or for violating CAF and FIFA Statutes and Regulations,” said CAF president Patrice Motsepe who appears to have preferred the option of going outside FIFA’s own Ethics processes to investigate the report.
“We have committed CAF to adhering to global governance, audit, transparency and ethics best practices and established in 2021, an Internal Governance and Compliance Department in CAF,” said Motsepe.
“This Internal Governance and Compliance Department brought the alleged breach of CAF’s internal Audit and Governance Regulations to our attention.”
According to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, an emergency meeting of CAF’s executive committee was held on Tuesday and included discussion of claims made in a report by its own head of governance, risk and compliance (GRC).
The Guardian claims the report includes allegations that Mosengo-Omba – who was appointed in March 2021 – “impeded” members of the GRC department from performing their duties.
CAF did not mention Mosengo-Omba by name in its own statement but he himself confirmed on social media he was the subject of the investigation.
“My efforts to turn around and regularise this institution, which has been disrespected at times, are being sabotaged by an out-of-the-blue report containing grievances without documented proof,” he posted on X on Wednesday. “The planned independent investigation will expose the falsity and origin of this report.”
Mosengo-Omba is a close ally of FIFA president Gianni Infantino. Africa has been the heart of his power base since he was elected president and can always be relied upon to do as they are told when it comes to major FIFA decisions, like the award of World Cup hosting.
Mosengo-Omba was parachuted in to the general secretary’s job at CAF as previous FIFA general secretary and ‘delegate for Africa’ Fatma Samoura was airlifted out as CAF lurched from one financial crisis and governance failure to the next.
Mosengo-Omba’s claims that Africa is now in a good place on both counts would appear to run contrary to the facts with the standard of play across the whole continent probably at its lowest ever and finances still a major challenge for all its federations.
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