ACCRA - Investigators from the Economic and Organized Crimes Office (EOCO) raided the offices of Ghana Football Association (GFA) here on Tuesday to enforce a high court search warrant.

Officials from the EOCO, formerly the Serious Fraud Office, took about three hours to conclude their operation, drawing scores of curious onlookers to the GFA offices where the investigators ransacked the offices of the executives including GFA General Secretary Kofi Nsiah.

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The officials left with 15 different files and nine computer central processing units (CPU), all belonging to the GFA and suspected to have records of the cases under investigation.

EOCO executive director, Kwaku Mortey Akpady, explained to the media later that his outfit had been investigating the GFA since last March though the GFA officials had been uncooperative and turned down numerous invitations to appear and answer some questions.

However, spokesman of the GFA, Randy Abbey, described the situation as unpleasant, saying that the EOCO had written to the GFA "to which we responded".

Akpady, nonetheless, told the media that the raid was carried out to obtain documents needed to investigate an issue of crime.

"We have information about a possible crime against the state of Ghana and is investigating that alleged crime a breach of Ghana's laws," he disclosed.

There have been allegations of non-transparency concerning a sponsorship package the GFA received from mobile telecommunications operator, Globacom, while an audit conducted by the Auditor-General's Department at the GFA's behest also raised many questions about its finances, prompting the EOCO to begin preliminary investigations into these allegations of malfeasance.

The EOCO subsequently invited the football authorities to respond to some purported indiscretions in the brokerage of the sponsorship deal with Globacom for the Premier League and the Black Stars, the national football team.

However, the attempts by the investigators seemed to have hit a snag when the GFA dragged EOCO to court over jurisdiction.

The world football governing body FIFA also wrote to the Ghanaian government recently, saying that it only had power to probe issues concerning financial commitments government had made into the GFA activities and not what the GFA had secured from corporate bodies as sponsorship.

FIFA has reportedly threatened to sanction the Ghanaian government if they dared investigate the Globacom deal which the GFA claimed it secured through its own efforts.

The government argued that it had a responsibility to ensure that what sponsors had committed to the GFA was put to proper and judicious use.

The position seemed to have been strengthened by the fact that all companies who sponsored sporting activities got tax holidays, making sponsorship an indirect sponsorship from the state.

The EOCO boss, Akpady, confirmed that his office had started scrutinizing the records obtained from the premises of the GFA.