The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) welcomes the announcement by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) that it has filed criminal charges against two former OFC officials, in relation to the construction and delivery of the OFC’s Home of Football complex in Auckland.
OFC became aware of irregularities with the Home of Football project, following an audit report requested by FIFA and provided by PricewaterhouseCoopers AG at the beginning of 2018. The OFC Executive Committee decided to conduct a forensic audit into OFC in April, 2018.
As a result of this audit, the OFC filed civil recovery proceedings in relation to the construction and delivery of the OFC Home of Football complex and other matters. These proceedings are presently before the Auckland High Court and are ongoing.
Since 2018, to avoid similar issues in the future, the OFC has undergone a thorough governance reform process to establish a governance framework which achieves excellent decision making in accordance with the good governance principles of transparency and accountability.
The reform included establishing a clear separation between the political body of an organisation and its management and clearly defining the role of the General Secretariat, Congress, Executive Committee, and the Confederation’s judicial bodies.
The OFC Congress approved the new Statutes on November 21, 2018, establishing the eligibility criteria for all office holders and appointing independent OFC Committees and judicial bodies.