THREE COUNTRIES YET TO BE PAID 2022 MAPUTO PRIZE MONEY
It’s just unbelievable that almost three years now boxers from Zambia, Mozambique and Algeria have not been paid their prize money they won at the 2022 AFBC African Men’s and Women’s Boxing Championships.
Some of the concerned boxers, Mozambican Alcinda Dos Santos, Zambians Patrick Chinyemba, Felistus Nkandu, Margret Tembo and Juliana Kasonka have demanded immediate payment of their rightful earnings.
“We’ve waited for too long now, nobody is telling us anything on our payment,” says Alcinda the two-time Africa light-middleweight champion and 2022 world silver medallist.
“This is very unfair, it’s putting us in a difficult situation with our families, they think we’ve been paid without sharing anything with them,” an angry Chinyemba, who won gold in the 2022 Africa Championships, told boxersworld.co.ke
“They’ve been keeping our money for too long, what’s more annoying they’re all quiet as if nothing happened,” says Maputo lightweight gold medallist Nkandu.
Like Chinyemba, Juliana is at a loss on what to tell her family members.
“Now our family think we ate all the money by ourselves without sharing with them, this is Africa,” says Juliana, bronze medallist in the Maputo event.l
Gold medallists were paid $10,000, silver $5000 and bronze $2,500.
Interestingly, former AFBC President Bertrand Mendouga of Cameroon confessed he used prize money of boxers from the three countries to refurbish their new headquarters ahead of the official launch by IBA President Umar Kremlev in early 2023.
Mendouga passed the buck to IBA for failing to honour their promise of remitting $500,000 to the confederations for their internal budget as pledged by Kremlev in the IBA congress in 2022 in Turkey.
Mendouga’s letter to Kremlev reads:
“I would like to remind you that the USD 100,000 sent in September 2022 for the organisation of the Maputo 2022 African Championships and the extraordinary congress were equitably used for these purposes.”
_“However, because it was necessary to honour Africa for the first time by providing the AFBC with a headquarters on the scale of this international boxing structure, and in view of_ _the imminence of your arrival in Cameroon scheduled for February 12, 2023 for the inauguration of the said headquarters, I had to use the money available (prize money from the aforementioned three countries) to meet the expenses linked to:_
− _the rental ;_
− _to repair the building,_ _which is in a very poor state of repair;_
− _equipping the headquarters ;_
− _and payment salaries of AFBC staff recruited after my election on 16_ _July 2022 in Algiers, and that of the Secretary_ _General on 17 September 2022 in Maputo._
_“It is obvious that this change in the destination of funds is justified by your promise to provide the AFBC with an_ _operating budget in due form. Unfortunately, until_ _30 June 2023, the AFBC has received nothing_ _from the IBA to enable_ _it to regularise this_
_situation._
_“It should also be pointed out that AFBC has neither a sponsor_ _nor any source of income other than_ _funding from the IBA._
_In the light of the_ _foregoing, it is clear that the use of prize money for the reasons_ _mentioned above, which is quite simply a matter_ _of the state of necessity faced by the AFBC, is far_ _from being qualified as mismanagement as_ _claimed by the Board of Directors, which had_ _moreover received the detailed statement of_ _these expenses, informed you._
_“All the supporting documents for the above-mentioned_ _expenditure have been made available to the_ _AFBC Secretary General. It would therefore be_ _advisable to regularise the AFBC budget for the_ _2022-2023 financial year, to enable me to remedy all these situations.”_
What Mendouga has not mentioned is who authorised him to spend the boxers’ prize money and whether there was a written agreement between him and IBA boss Kremlev that he can spend the prize money and then reimburse it from the $500,000 operating budget he was expecting from IBA.
The AFBC Board of Directors was not involved in the withdrawal of the prize money, and accused Mendouga of unilaterally deciding to use the prize money without their consent. They also doubted Mendouga’s explanation that the entire prize money totalling $177,500 of 29 boxers from the three countries was used in the refurbishment of the office and other expenses.
Nigeria’s Azania Omo Agege was one of the board members and later elected as the interim President following the suspension of Mendouga by the board for what they said was his high-handedness and alleged financial impropriety.
Azania further narrates what transpired in Yaounde, Cameroon in 2023 during the Africa Championships.
“When we got to Cameroon we found out Mendouga had used the prize money to open up the office, we had a rowdy session that led to his suspension in the presence of IBA President Umar Kremlev, we did another election among the board members and I was elected the interim President.
“After the tournament, I remained behind for three days to talk to Mendouga about the prize money. He had promised to return the money but he stopped picking my calls, so we never met. I was scared of my life I had to leave immediately because you never know.
“The signatories to the Yaounde account were the secretary general Andre Basil Kalong and Mendouga as the president. We went to the bank with Basil I upended my signature and removed Mendouga’s. There was nothing left in the bank, most of the money had been withdrawn. From the bank statement I have, it shows money was withdrawn from the bank eleven times in one day. The IBA had promised to pay the Maputo prize money but I don’t know what happened.”
This is the stinking garbage that the new President Eyassu Berhanu from Ethiopia inherited from Mendouga when took over AFBC leadership.
Berhanu promised to follow up the matter but so far the Maputo prize money remains unpaid, further blotting the image of the beleaguered African boxing body.
At one time, there was talk that IBA had wired the Maputo prize money to the bank account of the new AFBC headquarters in Addis Ababa but the interim secretary general Yohanes Birnane denies this.
“We have not received any money from IBA for the unpaid boxers’ prize money,” says Birhane.
And so the 29 boxers from Zambia, Mozambique and Algeria will continue waiting for their prize money as they curse Mendouga for using their hard-earned money in the ring without even having the courtesy to inform them.
AFBC has an obligation to ensure the boxers are paid their prize money immediately without any further unnecessary delay. Pay them now!
