Monumental cover-up at ASA – auditing firm

ATHLETICS SA (ASA) are adamant that they will allow a police investigation into allegations of alleged misappropriation of lottery funds against its president, Aleck Skhosana, to take its course after forensic auditors found he was unfit to hold office.

ASA vice-president Harold Adams said the board had not changed its stance since he dismissed auditing firm Wesscor’s findings that Skhosana was grossly negligent while he was chairman of KwaZulu-Natal Athletics (KZNA) between 2009 and 2012.

After the report had been leaked to the media, Adams was mandated by Skhosana to look into the latest forensic report.

Adams found the Wesscor report was a “recycled version” of the audit report conducted in 2011 and 2012, while he argued that none of the investigations found that Skhosana had taken any money from KZNA.

“The board had decided to wait for the outcome of the police investigations,” Adams said yesterday. “We didn’t think what they dished up could be called ‘unfit to hold office’. You can only come to that conclusion once a full investigation was done.”

Wesscor’s managing director Johan Wessels responded by saying Adams’s report was “a monumental cover-up”.

Previous audits were conducted in 2011 and 2012 by KZNA’s auditors, Aitken Lambert Elsworth, and the second by the KwaZuluNatal Provincial Treasury’s internal audit.

The third by Wesscor was commissioned by KZNA and was finalised in July 2015.

“The first mentioned report disclosed “close to R90 000” in fraudulent transactions. The second, in addition to deliberately signing a false closeout certificate by Mr Skhosana, disclosed “R138 548.71”, and our report confirmed R433 631 and a probable R4 856 000 misappropriated,” Wessels said.