A 2024 government inspector's report obtained by the news agency AFP accuses the Djibouti Football Federation of misusing money from FIFA, alleging favouritism in the award of contracts for its headquarters, overpricing of items within those contracts, and inadequate competitive tendering. The report also questions the handling of Saudi Arabian funds designated for the new building.
The sums are modest by the standards of global football and substantial by the standards of Djiboutian football. FIFA and the Confederation of African Football together provide the federation with more than $1 million a year.
The federation's answer
Souleiman Hassan Waberi, who heads the federation, said that "FIFA has officially confirmed to us that, to date, its monitoring mechanisms have revealed no indication of wrongdoing regarding the funds it disbursed".
He did not dispute everything. He acknowledged shortcomings in competitive bidding on certain operations, attributing them to the limited availability of items in Djibouti and saying procedures have since improved.
That is a narrower defense than it first appears, and it is worth separating the two claims. Saying that FIFA's monitoring has not flagged wrongdoing is not the same as saying the inspector's findings are wrong. It is a statement about what one body has detected, not about what happened.
The point about supply constraints is more substantive. Djibouti is a small country with a limited domestic market, and a genuine shortage of suppliers can make competitive tendering difficult in a way that would not apply in a larger economy. Whether that explains the specific findings is what an audit would determine.
FIFA did not respond to AFP's questions about the allegations.
Why this matters beyond Djibouti
FIFA distributes development money to more than 200 member associations, and for the smaller ones it is the dominant source of income. The system is designed to build facilities and competitions in places where the domestic game cannot fund them, and it works only if the money is spent as intended.
The oversight problem is structural rather than particular to any one country. FIFA's own monitoring depends heavily on documentation supplied by the recipient association, which is the same body whose spending is being examined. Independent scrutiny, when it happens, usually comes from national auditors or from journalists, as in this case.
There has been internal friction as well. A federation member, Mohamed Elmi Farah, resigned on August 12 this year, citing concerns about how resources were being managed.
No finding has been made against anyone, and the allegations set out in the inspector's report remain allegations. What the episode illustrates is how thin the machinery of accountability is at this level of the game, and how much of it depends on a report leaking.
