JOHANNESBURG - In its wide ranging audit of Cricket South Africa, the Fundudzi investigators paint a picture of an organisation where serious administrative matters were badly mishandled and partying was taken very seriously.
The interim board of directors, appointed by Sports Minister Nathi Mthethwa at the end of October, chose to release the full report on Wednesday. It is a lengthy document, which has caused CSA no small amount of problems throughout the year as it has sought to dodge making it public. The organisation even went so far as to force people who wanted to read it, including the Members Council, who commissioned the investigation and later Sascoc which tried investigate CSA, to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement to see it.
On Wednesday, CSA’s interim board, chaired by retired judge Zak Yacoob said it was making the report available because “it is overwhelmingly in the public interest and in the interest of CSA to release the report at this time.” It was doing so, even as the board recognised “the fact that some individuals and organisation have concerns that they have been mentioned or implicated in the report, that some individuals have not being heard and that the report does not necessarily paint a full picture.”
Running to 430 pages, the report has been made available on CSA’s website. There are several noteworthy parts, including the identity of the management consultants, which had promised to make CSA R30-million from agreements made with national and local government.
That money never accrued. In the summary of the forensic report made public last month, the company is referred to as ‘Service Company X.’ That company’s name is Tinanati, and its only director is Unathi Tshotwana, a former spokesperson for the ministry of energy.
The deal netted Tinanati, R3.4-million from CSA, but as the forensic report outlines, very little is clear about what exactly Tshotwana did to earn that money. Besides meetings with a range of people from local government officials in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, to “consultations” with parliamentary portfolio committee and even a meeting with a senior wealth manager at the Standard Bank Group in 2018 - when Standard Bank were still sponsors of CSA - most of the money paid to Tshotwana were “retainer fees.”
Those fees ranged in monthly payments from R220 000 to R289 207,90 in December 2018. In total Tananati were paid over R3-million by CSA, although the report also indicates additional payments of R470 792.10, for which the investigators could find no invoices. “There is no indication of how CSA considered whether Tinanati had delivered on its obligations,” states emphatically. In addition, there are several other flaws in the deal which was signed by CSA’s former Chief Operations Office Nassei Appiah in March 2019, even though payments to Tananati had already started in September 2018.
Tshotwana told the investigators he had been headhunted by Appiah and CSA’s former CEO, Thabang Moroe. The investigators found that Appiah and Moroe followed proper procurement processes in appointing Tshotwana’s company. Among Fundudzi’s recommendations is a criminal case be registered in terms of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.
Appiah and Moroe, also went of a spending spree with CSA’s company credit cards at a time when there wasn’t a policy in place for their use.
One section of the report deals with what appears to social functions at prominent restuarants, bars and nightclubs around the country, with massive payments for functions in the latter period of 2018, around the time of the first Mzansi Super League.
Appiah charge R47 000 to the credit card at Saint Champagne Bar and Lounge in Cape Town on November 17, 2018, the day after the opening match of the tournament was played at Newlands. Cubana in Port Elizabeth made R27 000 from CSA on November 27, 2018 - the match between the Nelson Mandela Bay Giants and Cape Town Blitz had been abandoned that day because of rain.
Over R22 000 was spent on the afterparty for the MSL final, that was played on December 16. The transaction for that amount was processed on December 17.
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