Safa won't investigate 'Bafana jersey' missing millions
Safa where are the missing millions?
Posted: 2011-12-05 09:54
Safa have brushed a deal in which they lost millions of rands under the carpet and have also declined to proceed with a forensic investigation into the matter.
The deal involves adidas-supplied Bafana Bafana jerseys sold during last year's World Cup in which Safa was supposed to pocket R32-million but only collected around R2-million instead.
According to a report in the Sunday Times newspaper yesterday, Safa urged South Africans to buy authentic jerseys and not 'Fong Kong' replicas, because the profits would be ploughed back into SA football, however allegations now are that the money from jersey sales did not reach its intended destination and has vanished .
It appears that Safa initially signed a deal with adidas in 2003, but before the World Cup kicked off, former Safa CEO Raymond Hack secretly ceded the adidas money to an entity called Safa Legal and Management (SLAM) in a deal ended up in short-changing the association and robbing it of cash to develop football in the country.
Safa president Kirsten Nematandani and CEO Robin Petersen refused to discuss details of the 'confidential' deals this week, but did not dispute the figures.
"These questions are not for this structure - they are for SLAM [to answer]," said Petersen.
Nematandani admitted that 'there were things that made us get worried [because] what we were getting was far less than we expected'.
However, he said he could not divulge details because there was a 'secrecy clause' in the deal with Stanton Woodrush, the company that owns 49 per cent of SLAM. Safa owned the other 51 per cent.
adidas confirmed they had paid royalty fees to Safa, but say they never agreed to ceding the Bafana jersey sales component to SLAM.
"At no stage were we told whether that money was used at Safa or paid over to SLAM," adidas marketing director Gavin Cowley told the newspaper. "It was always a mystery to me who SLAM was."
Though Safa had a right to appoint board members to SLAM (which is now being shut down), companies office records show no Safa officials were ever appointed directors.
Safa's national executive committee met on June 10 this year, where a decision was taken to "hand over the SLAM matter to forensic auditors and investigators" but Nematandani says the probe had been scrapped on Stanton Woodrush's insistence.
Instead, a final settlement was reached in June which saw Safa pay R5-million to Stanton Woodrush "in full and final settlement".
Nematandani said he had no idea why Hack signed the deal. But he was adamant that if the SLAM deal was brought to him today, there is no way he'd sign it.
"The less one talks about it, the better. It was a painful situation, and I don't want to violate the settlement agreement."
Speaking to the Sunday Times from Morocco last week, Hack admitted signing the deal, but said Safa "should have got more than R2-million. Safa must provide the figures. SLAM must provide the figures."
Hack defended himself against claims that he signed a poor deal, saying "we were trying to bring in additional income because we weren't getting anything from the Bafana name."
But he agreed that Safa should have managed its investment in SLAM better.
Speaking on behalf of SLAM, Eric Delport denied that any money went missing.
"This is the first we hear of any such forensic investigation. We find it surprising. In the first place, there are no monies which are missing, nor has Safa ever suggested that there are monies missing," he said.
Delport said if Safa believed that any cash was missing, "why [would] Safa have been prepared to abandon its claims and enter into a full and final settlement agreement [with Stanton Woodrush]".
Neil Lazarus, a lawyer and corporate executive who negotiated the deal for Stanton Woodrush, said SLAM made only about R10-million from the World Cup.
He said Safa ended up paying Stanton Woodrush about R10-million in total - R5-million for the Bafana Bafana name and another R5-million as its share of the profits from the World Cup.
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