5 years ago today, EOCO raids GFA offices

On Tuesday, 7th December 2010 a high-powered team from the Economic and Organized Crime Office (EOCO) stormed the premises of the Ghana Football Association (GFA) for documentary evidence on sponsorship agreements of the Association.

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) now designated EOCO had in their possession a search warrant that gave them the right to attain documents at the offices of the country's soccer governing body.

The exercise which lasted for nearly two hours halted operations at the offices as the staff was barred from going in and out of the state-of-the-art headquarters of the Football Association.

The team numbering over a dozen, centred their search at the office of the GFA scribe, (Kofi Nsiah), the head of the Administration and went away with eight Central Processing Units (CPU) from the various offices and bundles of files.

The operation drew scores of people to the GFA premises with mainly the media personnel the dominant.

Randy Abbey, Spokesperson of the GFA at the time told the media that the action of the SFO officials emanated from a search warrant issued through an ex-parte motion at the court.

"The SFO wrote to us and we responded. The case is pending in court, but they said they have a search warrant to look through documents at the GFA. "It is basically about sponsorship agreements of the GFA."

Randy described the situation as "unpleasant", adding, "some of the staff were traumatized because they had never had such experience." Attempts to seek reaction from officials of the SFO were unsuccessful as they remained mute to questions from media personnel.

Few months before this action, the SFO had invited the GFA to respond to some reported irregularities in the brokerage of the sponsorship partnership with the cellular outfit, Globacom on the Premier League and the exploits of the senior national team. Share 2