Pretoria - The South African Tourism acting chief financial officer Johan van der Walt was served with a notice of suspension on Tuesday.
Speaking to Talk Radio 702 on Tuesday, SA Tourism board chairperson Thozamile Botha said Van der Walt had until Tuesday to give reasons why he should not be suspended.
Botha said the board was not aware of the conflict of interest involving Van der Walt as he failed to declare his interests in meetings.
The decision by the country’s tourism marketing agency comes almost two weeks after Van der Walt admitted he had links to an agency that was set to receive R31 million from the controversial sponsorship deal with English Premier League team Tottenham Hotspur.
Since the controversial deal was exposed, three members of the board — Enver Duminy, Ravi Nadasen and Rosemary Anderson — resigned with immediate effect.
Meanwhile, SAT also indicated last week it has launched a forensic investigation into the whistle-blower who leaked the documents on the sleeve sponsorship deal.
The marketing agency said it wanted to know who was behind the leak. It said the process to proceed with the Spurs deal of R1 billion was based on facts before them.
On Tuesday, Botha said they had dropped the probe as they did not want to go on a witch hunt that would have made employees uncomfortable.
He said, however, this was not a typical whistle-blower case and the institution had not yet spent any money on the matter.
“My definition of whistleblowing is someone who is exposing an irregular and illegal action by an institution and that [involves] diverting resources of the state and deviating from the strategy of the institution.”
IOL