Following FIFA’s decision to lift the five-year financial restrictions on the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), President Michael Ricketts says the days of inefficient financial practices are over and vows to continue making significant strides going forward.

Football’s world governing body, which is the JFF’s largest source of funding, imposed the restrictions in 2020 due to concerns about their financial management and governance practices.

However, following the Jamaica Observer’s report on Wednesday, FIFA’s Head of Financial Governance Programme Christoph Suppiger announced in a virtual press conference on Wednesday morning that the Gianni Infantino-led body is satisfied with the improvements implemented by the JFF and has restored the federation’s full access to funding.

“The report showed massive improvements when it comes to financial governance matters as, for instance, the JFF successfully accessed online banking system, they have upgraded the accounting software system, and also made other efforts with regards to procurement procedures,” said Suppiger.

“Also, the level of supporting documentation has massively been improved and the FIFA-funded activities were fully supported with documentation. Based on this really great achievement, the FIFA governance audit and compliance committee on its most recent meeting has taken the decision to lift the restricted funding mechanism for the JFF, meaning they had full access to FIFA funding.”

FIFA supplies US 1.5 million (235.1 million) annually to member associations for operational costs but under restricted funding, they could only distribute a portion of the funds in monthly installments. They would also miss out on US multimillion project funds from the FIFA Forward programme.

While making it clear that the JFF didn’t miss out on funding due to the restrictions, Suppiger, says FIFA will increase the amount given for the monthly instalments.

“We can provide bigger amounts per instalments, it doesn’t mean that we will release any backlogs in one go, but we have the possibility to increase the funding of the funds that are possible because there is a set minimum of funds that member associations are entitled to receive,” he said.

Ricketts hailed his staff for the role they played and says the JFF will continue progressing in the right direction.

“We will be strong. We have different personnel, which is so very important, that are actually managing the governance structure and the financial processes so we will not go back there, not as long as I’m here. We must ensure that once we would have satisified our parent organisation, then the onus would certainly be on us to ensure that we stay on that path. We will not go back there, I can assure you,” said Ricketts.

JFF General Secretary Dennis Chung says the local governing body already has plans in motion after gaining full access again.

“I was on a call with someone from FIFA Caribbean and we were discussing the need for us to have a meeting next week to actually look at some of the things we can access and what the difference is to us and actually look at some development projects now that our focus has shifted from one where we were working to get off of restricted funding and show FIFA that we can actually practise proper financial governance,” said Chung.

Chung says the operations at the JFF have improved and expects to stay in FIFA’s good graces for the long term.

“We do have a reporting mechanism so even though the restrictions has been lifted, they’re still asking us to do the reporting so there’s a monthly report that we’ll do to FIFA on how the funds are spent. In addition to that, there’s the annual audit that is done, which looks at how the monies are actually spent, so that will continue and has been very effective,” he said.

“There’s a commitment to ensure that there’s proper financial governance. We have improved our internal controls, accounting systems and our policies, so all of those things are in place and we just need to make sure to continue with them with the help of the FIFA audit and also our external audit, which we will be completing by the end of March. We’ll ensure we’ll continue to comply; it’s just a matter of governance which we’re committed to,” Chung added.

— Daniel Blake