AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) yesterday announced that it is investigating the Tanzania Football Federation (TFF) for misuse of funds.
The Federation is in hot water for the use of 1bn/- donation made by President John Magufuli as well as other funds from other stakeholders meant for 2019 Under-17 African Cup of Nations preparations that the country hosted.
This was said by PCCB Director John Mbungo in his press briefing in Dar es Salaam yesterday.
Mbungo said that they have already gathered enough evidence about the malpractice such that the concerned individuals are being summoned for questioning.
“It is true that we are investigating about possible mismanagement of donations made by President Magufuli and other stakeholders which was channeled to help in the preparation of the national team (Serengeti Boys) ahead of their 2019 Under-17 AFCON competition,” Mbungo said, while responding to a question raised by a reporter.
He added that immediately after president Magufuli released the amount (1bn/-), other stakeholders also joined the donation campaign to help in the team’s preparation of which he hinted that it could have been misused.
The PCCB boss said that currently, documents and files from TFF are being perused and inspected page by page and some suspects are being interrogated to find out the truth.
“We have already collected enough evidence such that we are summoning everyone who was either involved in keeping the money or in its distribution. These people have an option to start returning the money as investigation continues,” he said.
Tanzania successfully hosted the competition in Dar es Salaam which saw the county’s representatives performing poorly as they finished last in their group A category without winning a single match.
They lost 5-4 to Nigeria, 3-0 to Uganda and another 4-2 setback from Angola hence missing the chance to clinch the title for the first time in their history.
Cameroon, who were packed in group B together with Senegal, Morocco and Guinea won the title for the second time in their history.
Four teams of the tournament which are Nigeria, Angola, Cameroon and Senegal qualified for the FIFA U-17 World Cup in Brazil as the CAF representatives.
Angola and Nigeria qualified for finishing third and fourth in the competition respectively. Then defending champions Mali failed to qualify.
Following completion of the tournament, CAF ejected Guinea from the competition, and deleted its results from the records, for fielding players with passports which had a different date of birth to those the players had used in the U-16 age restricted ‘International Dream Cup’ in Japan.
Senegal were given the remaining place at the U-17 World Cup as they had placed behind Guinea during the group stage.
