During the New York leg of his campaign to become the president of Fifa, Tokyo Sexwale this week joked during a conference that “maybe the FBI is also looking for me here”.
This week we also finally learnt South Africa had a copy of the indictment of the FBI investigation into corruption into Fifa way back in June.
It took a written request from the DA’s shadow sports minister, Solly Malatsi, for Justice Minister Mike Masutha to confirm this. “It was a correspondence that attached an indictment in respect to the investigation the FBI is conducting,” said the ministry. “They indicated they would be amenable to a partnership between the Department of Justice and South Africa.”
South Africa already has a partnership with the United States justice department. They have worked together in the past, but this time South Africa did not partner with them because the FBI had not formally requested “Mutual Legal Assistance”. Why wait? Why not get on with the business of looking deeper into the $10-million South Africa gave – via Fifa – to Jack Warner, a man, despite what the sports ministry’s Alec Moemi said in June, was not one of “good standing”.
“In June 2015, the USA’s Legal Attache merely sent a copy of their indictment with a covering letter wherein they were bringing to our attention the contents thereof and looking forward to a continued partnership with our Department as we have a bilateral agreement on such matters. This indictment had been made public as was easily available on the internet for public consumption. This was after the USA Attorney General held a press conference on the matter,” said the department of justice. “There is therefore no request for Mutual Legal Assistance or new communication between our department as the central authority and the Legal Attache in respect of this matter.”
But, not to worry, because the government is taking this seriously, so much so that Masutha, “noted the contents of the memorandum, including the indictment, and forwarded copies of the indictment to the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Corruption, the Minister of Sport and Recreation, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation and the Chairperson of the Anti-Corruption Task Team.”
In June, Sexwale told the BBC that he was worried about the claim the $10m was a “donation” to the “African diaspora”. “Where are the documents, where are the invoices, where are the budgets, where are the projects on the ground? If they are not there, you are going to leave the FBI interpretation intact.”
The interpretation remains intact and the investigation shamefully ignored by South African authorities. - The Star