- Minority Seeks Special Audit of World Cup Raffles and Ticket Funds
A demand for a special audit of Ghana’s 2026 World Cup raffles is widening the scrutiny of the country’s travel arrangements, with questions now focused on participants’ payments, promised prizes, visa outcomes and thousands of tickets bought with public funds.
Vincent Ekow Assafuah, the Ranking Member of Parliament’s Youth and Sports Committee, has asked the Auditor-General to examine two raffles and the World Cup fund.
He wants a full account of the money collected, the winners and the prizes promised, as well as clarification on whether participants who could not travel will be compensated.
The demand follows the Sports Minister’s disclosure that only five of 31 winners in the second raffle secured United States visas. That means 26 winners, or 83.87 per cent, did not obtain visas.
Kofi Adams says the government is working on compensation for those unable to travel and that the money raised through the second raffle has not been spent.
The gap between the number of winners and those who secured visas makes the financial accounting urgent. A raffle prize tied to international travel depends on more than selecting a winner: it requires clarity on what was promised, what was paid for, what could not be delivered and what remedy is available to participants.
An audit could establish whether the funds are intact and whether the proposed compensation matches the obligations made to winners.
Assafuah’s demand is not limited to the second raffle. He has questioned what happened to participants in the first exercise, which he says was cancelled without refunds before another raffle was organised.
He cited the example of a street hawker who might have staked GH¢10,000 through multiple GH¢10 entries, then lost the opportunity to travel without getting the money back. That is an illustration, not a verified account of an individual loss; the audit would need to establish how many people participated, how much each paid and whether refunds were made.
The Sports Minister has offered a different account of the earlier arrangements. Adams said an initial group of between seven and ten raffle winners had their travel documents processed after a meeting with organisers.
He said they received refunds, but were later asked to resubmit the money to Rambell to continue with the original travel plan; almost all chose to keep their refunds.
For the second raffle, organised by Mpuntu, he said all 31 winners had their travel documents processed, but only five obtained US visas. The minister says the fundraising committee is holding the money for compensation.
“Every pesewa of the raffle that was run by Mpuntu has not been touched,” Adams said. His assurance is material, but it does not replace an independently verifiable reconciliation.
A special audit could compare receipts with bank records, identify who controls the funds, confirm any refunds or outstanding liabilities, and set out how compensation would be calculated.
The proposed review also raises questions about the prizes themselves. Assafuah wants the financial arrangements behind the advertised rewards disclosed, alongside the contract with the raffle operator and clarification on whether the National Lottery Authority licensed or partnered in the exercise.
These are questions about the design and administration of the raffles; they do not, by themselves, establish that money was misused or that the exercises were unlawful.
The audit’s scope would matter. It should distinguish between money raised by participants, public expenditure on World Cup travel, and any funds held by a fundraising committee or private operator. Combining those streams into one headline figure could obscure who paid, who received the money and what each payment was meant to cover.
A second strand of the demand concerns 2,922 World Cup tickets purchased with public funds. Assafuah wants to know how many were allocated to raffle winners and whether those tickets were used. That accounting should identify the purchase cost, distribution, attendance or non-use, and any remaining ticket inventory.
Without such a record, the public cannot assess whether the ticket purchase served its stated purpose or whether unused tickets created avoidable costs.
The tickets also cannot be treated as interchangeable with raffle receipts. Publicly funded tickets and participants’ stakes have different sources and potentially different rules for authorisation and reporting. A credible review would follow each stream separately before reconciling the overall World Cup fund.
The Minority has asked Parliament’s Youth and Sports Committee to include the raffle arrangements in its ongoing investigation into the visa controversy. It has also called on the Data Protection Commission to examine how winners’ passports and personal information were collected, stored and shared.
The information needed to arrange travel can be sensitive; an inquiry would need to determine what data was collected, who had access, how it was protected and whether it was retained or shared appropriately.
There is a public-interest case for answering these questions irrespective of the political contest surrounding them.
People who paid to participate need to know what became of their money and what happens when a promised trip cannot proceed.
Taxpayers need an account of the publicly funded tickets. Government, in turn, has an opportunity to support its assurances with records that can be independently checked.
A special audit would not determine visa decisions, which were made by the relevant foreign authorities, nor would it establish wrongdoing simply because most winners did not obtain visas. Its role would be narrower and more practical: to trace the funds, test whether the raffle rules and contracts were followed, account for ticket purchases and usage, and verify compensation commitments.
The government has said the second raffle proceeds remain untouched and that compensation is being prepared. The next step is to provide a clear timeline, publish the basis for compensation and disclose the records needed for an independent examination.
Until then, the central questions remain open: how much was raised across both raffles, how many participants were refunded, what did the prizes cost, and what became of the public tickets?
Those answers would turn assurances and allegations into an auditable account. For a national campaign funded partly by public resources and partly by participants hoping to travel, that is the minimum standard of transparency required.
