ASA awaits police fraud probe

Dismisses opinion on president

THE Athletics SA (ASA) board has backed its president, Aleck Skhosana, dismissing for the time being an audit that found him unfit to hold office.

The federation’s vice-president, Harold Adams, said in a brief report posted on the Boland Athletics website that ASA could act only after police had completed their investigation into fraud that was perpetrated by two employees at KwaZulu-Natal Athletics (KZNA) between 2009 and 2011, when Skhosana was the provincial president.

Some of the statements in Adams’s report contradict elWesscor ements of the Wesscor audit, which was completed earlier this year.

Adams raised suspicion over the timing of the Wesscor audit. “It should be questioned why this matter has been resurrected at this particular time when Skhosana is president of ASA.”

Adams could not be reached for comment, but an ASA executive member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Skhosana was never approached by Wesscor.

Adams said in his document that Wesscor was “pretty much a recycled version” of two previous audits, from 2011 and 2012, which showed Skhosana had not taken money.

However, the 2012 audit, commissioned by the KwaZulu-Natal provincial treasury internal audit unit, found Skhosana had signed a false compliance certificate, which according to was sufficient grounds to charge him with gross misconduct. Wesscor also claimed to have a wider scope than the first two audits.

Adams criticised KZNA for not asking ASA to handle the matter, but provincial president Sello Mokoena hit back. “Nothing could be further from the truth.

“The first copy from the auditors was given to [the] ASA board through Dr Adams on August 1 2015 and nothing happened. The ASA board neither reverted nor requested KZN Athletics to come explain itself,” said Mokoena.

The board member said ASA couldn’t treat the audit as gospel. “The police report will be the most objective.”

According to the Adams report, ASA rejected the first two audits and KZNA had dealt with “all the people implicated by” the first two audits.

But charges were laid in January 2012 by then ASA president James Evans, but the two perpetrators, one of whom has since died, were never brought to book.

Skhosana had been grossly negligent by accepting the resignations of the two alleged fraudsters before their disciplinary hearings, said Wesscor, which put the fraud at R433 631, adding it could be 11 times that.

Skhosana also allegedly failed to act when first alerted to the problem, and signed blank cheques without scrutiny.

“[Skhosana] is eminently unfit to hold any office within athletics structures in South Africa,” Wesscor concluded.

Adams said in his report that ASA could not conduct a parallel investigation alongside a police probe. “The police investigation and the legal process will tie up all the loose ends.”

It should be asked why this has been resurrected