RIO DE JANEIRO: Eleven of the 13 airports being prepared to cope with next year’s World Cup fan flood and five of the six new stadia are struggling to meet the development deadlines writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

A study by an independent assessor has shown that 12 of the airport projects have accomplished less than 50pc of the planned building renovation.

The delays are those in Belo Horizonte (Confins), Brasília (Juscelino Kubistchek), Campinas (Viracopos), Cuiabá (Marechal Rondon), Curitiba (Afonso Pena), Fortaleza (Pinto Martins), Natal (São Gonçalo do Amarante), Porto Alegre (Salgado Filho), Recife (Gilberto Freyre), Rio de Janeiro (Galeão) and Salvador (Luís Eduardo Magalhães). Only São Paulo (Guarulhos/Cumbica) and Manaus (Eduardo Gomes) are up to speed.

Most of the badly delayed work concerns the passenger terminals including at Recife where the only construction undertaken has been on the control tower.

Brazil’s Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo has admitted that the Confederations Cup in June had demonstrated clearly how far behind the country was in its infrastructure preparation for the World Cup next year.

All 12 venues need to be ready by December but Rebelo estimated that work needed to be accelerated at five of the six stadia that are currently under development. He has assessed only the new Sao Paulo stadium – venue for the Opening Match next June – as comfortably on track to be completed on time.

Rebelo told a senate hearing: “We can get everything done in time, but we will need to speed up the pace of the construction work. Sao Paulo is at an advanced stage with more than 80% of the work done, but the others are facing a tight deadline. We need to improve the pace in most of the stadia if we want to deliver them by the (December) deadline.”

Rebelo added that four of the stadia – in Curitiba, Manaus, Natal and Porto Alegre – are less than 80pc completed. “It’s possible to intensify the work now by adding more engineers and more workers,” Rebelo said. “We couldn’t do that in the earlier stages, but now we can.”

He insisted that the new stadia would not be white elephants but “golden elephants” courtesy of the other entertainment events which would be staged in them.

** The Brazilian Football Federation may lose half of its 2012 profit following the collapse of a bank at the centre of a government corruption scandal.

Bloomberg has reported that the CBF had deposited $13.14m with Belo Horizonte-based Banco Rural over the last decade. Brazil’s central bank liquidated Rural earlier this month citing “serious” legal violations.

Bank executives, including former ceo Katia Rabello, were convicted last year by the Supreme Court of money laundering and mismanagement of a financial institution as part of the high court’s ruling in the so-called Mensalao case.

Officials from Brazil’s ruling Workers’ Party were found guilty by the Supreme Court of using embezzled public funds and fraudulent loans from Rural to buy votes in the Congress from 2003 to 2005. The Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper has said the CBF’s chief financial officer and treasurer have been fired as a result of the investigation.

The CBF recorded revenues of $166.1m in 2012 and net income of $24.2m. Bloomberg said that the federation risks losing the majority of its money held at Banco Rural because of the terms of the bank’s liquidation. However, Brazilian football’s governing body is said to carry out the majority of its banking with commercial partner Banco Itau.

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