NZ fraud office investigating corruption claims

Corruption allegations that stretch from New Zealand and the Pacific all the way to the top of world football are under investigation by New Zealand’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
After years of silence about the scandal, the SFO confirmed to Stuff that it had launched an inquiry into former employees of the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC).
One of the people under investigation is former OFC president, David Chung, who also served as senior vice-president of the sport’s governing body, Fifa.
At his peak, Chung was second only to the Fifa president, a remarkable rise to power for an official who had started out as Papua New Guinea Football Association president.
An SFO spokesman said the complaint had been laid by Fifa.
Chung and former OFC general secretary Tai Nicholas have been banned from football for alleged breaches of Fifa’s code of ethics.
Nicholas has previously denied any wrong-doing, while Chung said he was resigning for “personal reasons” when he left his post in 2018 before a damning audit report was presented to OFC’s annual general meeting.
OFC is one of six global confederations under Fifa.
The SFO’s involvement is the latest development of an affair that has bogged down OFC for years, and halted construction of what was supposed to be a vaunted “Home of Football” facility in East Auckland.
Fifa loaned OFC US$10 million (K34 million) for the two-stage project of sports fields and buildings in Auckland. Work began in 2012 and was due for completion in 2016.
Instead, stage two ground to a halt in 2018, millions of dollars over budget, and mired in controversy.
It is at the centre of the allegations now before the SFO, with Fifa claiming conflicts of interest and the misappropriation. – stuff