Sulom owes Fam K9m

Football Association of Malawi (FAM) on Friday summoned Super League of Malawi (Sulom) to explain why they have failed to remit about K9 million to the mother body.

The amount is FAM’s 10 percent cut from gate collections and broadcast rights revenue from Super League matches. A source told Nation on Sunday that the meeting, which took place at Sunbird Capital in Lilongwe, also tackled the botched controversial Super League television rights deal with Beta Television.

Both FAM and Sulom confirmed the development yesterday. FAM general secretary Alfred Gunda, commercial and marketing director Limbani Matola, and executive committee member Rashid Ntelera, represented the association while Sulom was represented by its president Innocent Bottomani, general secretary Williams Banda and treasurer Tiya Somba-Banda.

Gunda said the meeting was successful.

“The meeting was basically an interface. It of course looked at a number of events that took place before the season kicked off and how best to handle them in future.

“I think we need to have more of these meetings with all the affiliates to sort out some of the things that go wrong in our football administration,” he said.

But Sulom treasurer SombaBanda, while acknowledging that they owe FAM some money, said the figure has been blown up.

“Of course, we owe FAM money, but not amounting to K9 million as they put it. FAM sends its people to collect its cut. We presented to them the documentation of the payments. They have taken the documents and they will cross-check with their records as well,” said Somba-Banda.

Gunda said FAM will look at the documents and reconcile the figures.

He said: “What our accounts records show is that about K9 million was never remitted to us. This amount has accumulated over a long period of time.

“But Sulom also has its records that show a different figure. So, let’s wait for the accounts department to look at the figures again after that we will see if indeed they paid us.”

On the botched Sulom and Beta Television broadcasting rights deal Gunda said: “We wanted to understand what exactly happened so that we do not not have a repeat of that scenario in future.”

Beta TV failed to fufil their obligation after a successful bid of the rights.