Enquiry demanded into World Cup spending

Red Devils coach Marc Wilmots has demanded a thorough enquiry into allegations of financial mismanagement by senior members of the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) at the World Cup in Brazil earlier this summer.

One of the major items involves a bill of €300,000 due for reservations for footballers’ spouses at an expensive hotel. On Wilmots’ order, spouses were told to stay at home, but no-one at RBFA cancelled the reservations.

Steven Martens, CEO of RBFA, said he knew nothing about the hotel problem and agreed that the matter needed to be investigated to determine whether someone within the association or the travel agency taking care of arrangements was responsible.

“There may have been a misunderstanding,” Wilmots told VTM News. “We need first to find out what happened and then we can talk about what needs to be done”.

“The question has to be seen in a wider context,” commented Martens (pictured). The World Cup brought the RBFA some €12 million in income, he noted. But the costs of taking part, including player and staff salaries and travel expenses, account easily for €10 million. Any suggestion that money was wasted needs to be taken extremely seriously, he said.

Martens and his directors are also under fire from the RBFA board for claiming a performance-related bonus of up to €75,000 each, which they argue is written into their contracts. Martens complained that the two matters are being seen as aspects of the same problem.

“It hurts to think we’ve systematically made a profit the last three years and increased our budgets, but then one mistake is made and all of that is forgotten,” he said. “It’s clear a mistake was made with the hotel bill, and I’m not at all happy about that… but to claim now that we’re unprofessional – that’s a step too far,” he said.