Johannesburg — Safa says they’ll go all out to “maintain their reputation” after taking Bart Henderson to court for his damning report “on the mismanagement“ within the mother body.
Early last month, the association was caught in another cobweb of a financial scandal after a 44-page report from Henderson Solutions — a company that deals with fraud and corruption cases — was leaked.
In the damning “forensic report” which he titled “OFFSIDES”, Henderson accused Safa’s president Danny Jordaan and chief financial official Gronie Hluyo for running the organisation like a personal fiefdom.
Part and parcel of the report, Henderson raised alarms on a huge sum of R6,3 million that was paid to or for the benefit of Jordaan, while his CFO is said to have pocketed R1,67 million as well.
Amid those staggering figures, including the sum of R8,3 million paid to a certain Ngwenya, Henderson also questioned the distribution of the dissolved R600 million from the 2010 Fifa Legacy Trust Fund.
Safa stuck to their statement of “taking legal action against individuals circulating defamatory statements” 10 as they called a briefing on Friday on the matter post an NEC meeting on June 17.
In the briefing that was chaired by Safa’s vice president, Bennet Bailey, Hluyo and CEO Lydia Monyepao, Safa said they’ve decided to go the legal route in clearing their name and individuals against the report.
This was done through their legal team, Fairbridges Wertheim Becker Attorney, who was represented by their Johannesburg director Lesedi Mphahlele at Safa House during the briefing.
“Following the decision of the NEC to take legal action, we subsequently contacted the CEO to draft an affidavit which was used to go and lay a criminal charge against Bart Henderson,” Mphahlele said.
“A case was opened on the 30th of June at Booysens Police Station. Two charges were laid, one criminal defamation and the other one related to the contravening of section 11.1 of the POPI ACT.
“This prohibits any individual or organization from processing private information without the consent of the data subject. The CEO has received the texts from Saps with the case number: CAS 524/6/2023."
In ensuring that they ran a watertight case against Henderson and his company, Safa also called ENSAfrica, the forensic law firm that were the attorneys for the 2010 Legacy Trust.
Hluyo, though, also stressed that everything that his department has carried out has been by the book — hence they’ve been receiving clean audits from independent auditors.
“Every year, we have audits from Fifa. Above our statutory auditors, Fifa send their auditors. And over the years, we have received unqualified opinions,” Hluyo said.
“We have prepared our books on time. Our audited financial statements are presented to our members at congress, and they are reviewed on an annual basis. The recent financial statements are on our website.”
With Hluyo saying they have nothing to hide as an association, Bailey said ‘enough is enough’, people who want to tarnish the name of the association will be brought to the book.
“We sit with an audit chair which is external, so is the governance committee. So those structures should be tested if there are violations of issues within the organization or cooking of books,” Bailey said.
“But if those structures can’t be tested, then there’s malicious intent. We are saying ‘genoeg is genoeg, enough is enough’. We are putting our foot down and we are saying 'let's test this in court'.”
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