By Ameenu Shardow
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The 2014 World Cup Planning Committee set up by the Ministry of Sports failed to do ‘due diligence’ on the financial capacities of travel and tour firms it contracted, project coordinator Fred Darko has admitted.
A lot of allegations have been thrown at travel and tour agencies contracted to transport Ghanaian soccer fans and other category of persons to go watch the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
These agencies have been blamed particularly for inflating the number of people expected to travel on the state’s ticket to go support the Black Stars.
They have also been accused for failing to mobilize enough resources to pre-finance some of their activities when the Sports Ministry run into some challenges.
The Project Coordinator Fred Darko now admits the planning committee failed in its mandate to do ‘due diligence’ on the financial capacities of the travel and tour firms.
“We find out that we didn’t do due diligence on the travel and tour agencies by way of looking through their bank statements to see if they were capable of pre-financing when need be,†he told the 2014 World Cup Commission on Tuesday.
“These are some of the things we didn’t do – to go into details about their financial capacity.
“But then the three that were shortlisted had the experience and track record.
“But the lapse was that we didn’t get into details about the financial capacity.â€