Now Carina Marx feels the pinch
● As another sports personality emerged with a tale of a crashed Liquid Telecom sponsorship, the company has come out defending its actions.
Top obstacle-course runner Carina Marx has yet to be paid for work she did for the company.
She also suffered financial loss after giving notice to quit her personal trainer job early last year after being promised a R1.2m contract by previous CEO Kyle Whitehill, but the deal fell through. She salvaged her post at the gym, but lost many clients.
Marx was talking after the company cancelled two sponsorships, one with sprinter Akani Simbine and the other for an athletics series with Stillwater Sports management.
Liquid Telecom bought itself out of the contract with Simbine, but is scheduled to go to arbitration over the Stillwater deal, said to be worth at least R15m over three years.
Liquid Telecom CEO Reshaad Sha said there had been problems with the Stillwater contract as well as the proposed agreement with Marx. “If it [a sponsorship] doesn’t meet the highest standards of corporate governance ... we look deeper and pause or exit if required,” Sha said.
“The Stillwater one was signed the week the CEO left ... with no authority to do so ... That was between the previous CEO and the previous head of marketing who’s also no longer here.”
Sha added the company was prepared to compensate Stillwater for the meets where Liquid Telecom banners were displayed. “We must pay something for that.”
Marx still has the WhatsApp conversation with Whitehill, her client at the time, in which he assured her the 15-month sponsorship would happen.
Marx, who did motivational work for the company, had been told that she would be the face of their internal sales campaign. In return she would be paid to compete.
But Sha said the contract was halted at a level above the CEO because of uncertainty over the work Marx would actually do.
He said Whitehill told the legal team to offer Marx a R250,000 settlement.
Given less than 24 hours to accept, she rejected it because the document contained factual inaccuracies to which she couldn’t put her signature, like saying it was for “goodwill” instead of work done.
Marx is still considering her options.