Abedi Pele on committee to run Ghana football after scandal
ACCRA, Ghana (AP) Former Ghana international Abedi Pele has been appointed to a five-man committee which will temporarily run football in the West African country. The committee was appointed on Wednesday after the Ghana Football Association was dissolved by the government following a corruption scandal.
The scandal, which was revealed last month, led to GFA president and FIFA Council member Kwesi Nyantakyi resigning from his roles. He also quit as vice president of the Confederation of African Football after being caught in a sting operation accepting cash from undercover journalists posing as businessmen looking to gain favor at the GFA.
FIFA banned Nyantakyi from all football for 90 days while its ethics committee investigates the allegations against him.
Nyantakyi is also facing criminal charges in Ghana and is accused of using the name of the country's president, vice president and other senior government officials to promise favorable business deals to the men posing as investors.
Ghana's government has vowed to ''sanitize'' the football association after the undercover documentary accused a number of senior soccer officials and referees of taking bribes and claimed to show widespread corruption in Ghanaian football.
Nyantakyi apologized when he resigned last week, saying he had made ''a series of errors'' after allegedly being caught taking a bribe of $65,000 from the undercover journalists. In the documentary, Nyantakyi takes the bundles of cash and shoves them in a black plastic bag. The cash is referred to as ''shopping money'' for the FIFA executive, who is African football's second-most senior official.
