The Ghana government has always paid its players in cash at the World Cup, Ghana Football Association Executive Committee Randy Abbey has revealed.
The country paid its players all their bonuses and appearance fees in cash at the 2006 and 2010 World Cup which means it is a norm of the team.
The Black Stars have been under intense scrutiny since they were paid their World Cup appearance fees in cash in Brazil last week which prompted anger in some quarters.
His revelation comes in the wake of controversy that greeted the flight of some $3 million from Ghana to Brazil to pay angry Black Stars players threatening to boycott a World Cup game.
The incident has made Ghana a subject of global ridicule with many major international media houses mocking the country.
Abbey, who was a member of Ghana's World Cup delegation in 2006 and 2010, revealed it had always been the practice for government to carry cash to the Black Stars as payment for appearance fees and other allowances.
According to him, it happened in 2006 as well as in 2010 and hoped that with the lessons of 2014, the country will adopt a more sanitised way of paying its players.
Discussing the matter on Joy FM's news analysis programme Newsfile Randy Abbey who was the FA spokesperson when Ghana went to the World Cup in 2010 admitted that the players were paid in cash as has happened in 2014.
The only difference perhaps was that there was no minister or deputy formally announcing the decision to carry the cash to South Africa as has been done by Joseph Yammin in the Brazil case.
Even that Randy Abbey said tax officials in South Africa who thoroughly monitored media reports in Ghana picked up snippets of information that the players were been paid in cash and wanted taxes to be paid on those bonuses.
He said he convinced the South Africans that it was only the per diems of the players which were being paid and not the bonuses. The per diems for each player amounted to $100 per day, he recalled and invited the tax officials to deduct the tax on the $100 if they wanted.
Randy Abbey said the country has to insist that mode of payment be changed so that monies would always be paid through the Bank accounts of the players.
Source: Myjoyonline