The Football Association of Ireland has landed itself in more trouble this week as they attempted to unveil their current financial records to the media during a press conference which had taken place at their HQ in Abbotstown, Co. Meath last Friday.
The figures that I am going list here are to come in for some shocking reading.
This is what has been learned of the FAI's latest financial woes as it stands from within the past few days.
The FAI had liabilities of €55 million contained in an incomplete audit carried out by Deloitte since last Friday. Regrettably, this figure has now recently increased to €85 million to date, as reported in an
Irish Times article, by Professor Niamh Brennan who is a professor of Management at the UCD Centre for Corporate Governance. The FAI also has €84 million on performing assets included in the updated figures at the time of writing. €62 million of the €85 million liability has to be paid off within one year.
Deloitte have also pointed out while doing
work on the main audit for the FAI. They discovered that there may another secret set of unknown accounts placed within the board of directors at the association. The board of directors are also in more trouble here because they did not declare their full set of accounts for the period at the end of 2018. Under The Companies Act 2014 in the Republic of Ireland; the directors in this case have carried out a criminal offence under it's own interpretation of the legislation. As punishment; each director in the FAI are potentially liable to pay a fine of €50k and/or a prison term of up to 5 years. There is some detail here about how The Companies Act is explained from this article published by
The Irish Examiner.
The full accounts for 2019 have not been unveiled yet as they will be unveiled later this year. But they have revealed some stark information that there is negative cash flow for 2019 & a worsening financial situation being apparent at the association. So this means that with the halting of funding from both the government & Sport Ireland. It has no money coming into the association at all. It's effectively a bankrupt organisation.
Other things apparent from the FAI's audit from Deloitte has said the association had paid out a severance package amounting to €462k to it's former CEO John Delaney. He was also meant to be paid a bonus amounting to €3 million which was due to be paid in the year 2021 & 2022. Deloitte have also said in their official statements written from within the audit that vital documentation are known to be missing when it carried out the audit of the association.
The ST had reported last weekend that Irish police officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau & Revenue tax inspectors have come in to forensically examine the accounts of the FAI at it's HQ in Abbotstown. It's currently in trouble with the Irish Revenue Commissioners of under payment of taxes & for potential criminal activity. The FAI are to pay a sum of €2.3 million in fines & penalties. They also made a voluntary declaration to Revenue of €2.1 million for underpayment of Income Tax & VAT.
Now there was also meant to be a big media launch of a re-financing plan for the future of the FAI earlier today. That has been delayed until sometime later this week.
Representatives from the FAI were also meant to attend a Irish parliamentary committee hearing this morning being held by the committee of Transport, Tourism & Sport. This was to allow more questions to be answered from the FAI which was meant to address their scale of their current financial woes. They didn't do that today. That development has also been delayed to a unspecified time.
All of this news about it's finances is heartbreaking for it's lower grade staff because they could lose their jobs before Christmas. They were also never involved in what the board were doing in effectively destroying the legacy of the association. A lot of these lower grade staff are paid about €25k a year in wages. They are not feeling that happy with all of the news that has happened to the association in the last few months. It has been a very bleak period for all of the people who do
work very hard for the organisation within every level of the sport except for dealing with the former CEO & board of directors. Those guys are the ones that are at fault here. Not the staff who
work at the organisation who their
work at the HQ.
The FAI have also stepped up security procedures at it's Abbotstown HQ after it received threatening letters posted to the association during the weekend.
There is also some indirect news hitting the FAI when it relates to it's financial woes.
A junior player from Co. Clare has received a 6 month ban from playing football at his club after he expressed his criticisms of the FAI on social media. He said via a post on Twitter that both Delaney & the FAI board of directors involved in this scandal were "a shower of scumbags". He also said that he wanted to see change happen within all strands of the FAI in a further tweet. He is not a very active player. Himself & his mate were involved in expressing opinions that were going against the status quo of supporting John Delaney as his role of CEO within the FAI. If the player involved making the tweets says more negative comments about Delaney on social media. He will get his ban extended by a year until June 1 2021.
There is also some sad news reported about the upcoming demise of Limerick FC today. There is more detail about this story
here.
There was also some heartbreaking news which is not related to the financial scandal at the FAI.
I had reported here some time ago that there was a 17 year old player from Co. Waterford, playing for the Ireland underage international team, who was a victim of an acid attack carried out by teenagers in the city.
There was a court case that gave it's judgement today on the case. The judge had said in his ruling with a recommendation from the Director of Public Prosecutions that the perpetrators will not get formally charged as a result of carrying out the crime. They will only go away with a juvenile caution which means that they will not get any jail time at all in a prison cell in Ireland. They will be let off scot free which is absolutely disgraceful & disgusting. The victim's mother is to appeal the ruling that the sentence should be reversed for her son who received this horrific attack. I hope that with confidence & determination that she will get the sentenced reversed immediately for her son because she does not deserve to continue receiving this ongoing amount of pain for something that was life changing for his son's career & to be dealing within their own life.
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