Mbalula: no plans to ask for $10m refund
SPORTS Minister Fikile Mbalula says the government has no plans to claim back the $10-million entrusted to disgraced Caribbean football supremo Jack Warner, despite mounting evidence that he pocketed the cash.
“We haven’t considered anything yet. This matter is before the courts in the US and we don’t know how all the allegations will end,” he said.
Only after clarity about the claims in the US had been arrived at “we will know what steps to take”, he said.
This was echoed by South African Football Association CEO Dennis Mumble, who confirmed there were no plans to try to recover the money.
“We await the finalisation of the legal processes in respect of these allegations. Once these have been concluded, the association will assess the options available,” said Mumble.
No South Africans are formally named in the FBI indictment. It remains unclear if any action will be taken to reclaim the payment, which US prosecutors say was a bribe to secure Warner’s vote for South Africa to host the World Cup.
While Mbalula has denied the payment was a “bribe” — arguing it was a legitimate payment to Warner’s association Concacaf designed to benefit the African diaspora in the Caribbean — new evidence continues to emerge contradicting his claim.
Already, two whistleblowers have directly implicated South Africa’s bid committee in the payment of bribes to Warner.
They are Warner’s former Fifa colleague Chuck Blazer and Warner’s eldest son, Daryan.
It has emerged that Daryan made a secret plea bargain deal with US prosecutors in which he admitted to his role in “aiding and abetting the receipt of a bribe or kickback payment made by the South African bid committee in connection with its bid to host the Fifa World Cup”.
US prosecutors claim Warner dispatched a “family member” — who from unsealed court records appears most likely to be Daryan — to Paris to collect a briefcase of US currency from a “high-ranking South African bid com-
If you’re concerned about bribery, you would be careful about dealing with Jack Warner
mittee official”.
Even if the South African government believed the payment was made legitimately, the fact that US prosecutors say that Warner “caused a substantial portion of the funds to be diverted for his personal use” would give them grounds to try to recover the money.
The FBI indictment says about $200 000 went into Warner’s personal loan account and $1.4-million was laundered via a Trinidad and Tobago businessman who owned a supermarket chain. Weeks later, that businessman
deposited $1.4-million into accounts held by Warner and his family.
David Lewis, executive director of Corruption Watch, said the government should have exercised greater caution before paying the $10-million donation to Warner in 2008.
“He had such a reputation. If you were concerned about perceptions of bribery, you would be very careful about dealing with JackWarner . . . You would want the conditions to be very clear, above board. You would want your auditors to keep a careful eye on what was being done with it and nothing like that seems to have been done — quite the contrary.”
Lewis said Mbalula’s claim that it “wasn’t our business how the money was spent” was startling.
“It’s absolutely our business to know how the money was spent. No government grant of any sort or any scale should ever be given without a robust auditing and reporting process of what happens with that money.”
Lewis said the explanations for the donation, largely led by Mbalula, were “outlandish and implausible”.
“Nobody, including me, wants to see what was a great event for all South Africans tarnished by this. What emerges from all of this is that Fifa has been a criminal conspiracy for a long time and increasingly, from the evidence, it seems that no World Cup has been procured without this kind of thing.”
Hawks spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said a preliminary assessment, started last week, was still under way to determine if a full-scale investigation into the bribery allegations was warranted in South Africa.