FIFA intermediary, Yussif Alhassan Chibsah, has said Asante Kotoko hid vital information from him in their transaction with Esperance which resulted in the club having to forfeit the transfer fee of $150,000 for their sale of midfielder Kwame Bonsu to Esperance.
Kotoko sold Bonsu to Esperance in 2018 but the Tunisians refused to pay the money because Kotoko owed them $180,000 in FIFA fines from their controversial signing of Emmanuel Clottey in 2015.
Chibsah, who facilitated the transfer of Bonsu to Esperance, then stepped in to retrieve the money with no success.
He has now blamed his unsuccessful attempts at retrieving the money on Kotoko’s non-disclosure of their full history with the Tunisian side.
“I never did anything wrong. There wasn’t full disclosure of information to me. I never knew Kotoko and Esperance had an issue with $180,000 involved,” he told Benjamin Nketsia on The Tracker on Citi TV.
“If I had known that, probably I wouldn’t have signed the undertaking or I would have chosen the wording of the undertaken differently. I signed the undertaken that I would be held responsible if Esperance failed to pay the money.
“And I did that because I knew my job and I knew the process to take Esperance through if they failed to pay the money.
“If there was full disclosure to be about the outstanding payment of $150,000, I would have gone about that deal differently. It’s unfortunate that it turned out that way.”
Background
Esperance had earlier delayed in paying Bonsu’s transfer fee in view of the unresolved issues around the signing of Emmanuel Clottey.
Kotoko would subsequently be fined US$240,000 by FIFA with the breakdown as follows:
transfer fee US$180,000;
accrued interest- US$45,000;
legal charges – US$15,000.
A pact was, however, reached between Kotoko and Esperance to waive the US$45,000 accrued interest with US$150,000 being Bonsu transfer fee paid as part payment to offset the US$180,000 debt with the remaining US$30,000 rather paid by Kotoko.