Justin Pearce
While Dr Allan Boesak was making headlines daily in South Africa with allegations of corruption, a United States corporation was blissfully unaware that its $50 000 donation to the Foundation for Peace and Justice (FPJ) was never used for the purposes for which it was intended.
This week Kerry Traubert, a representative of the Coca-Cola Foundation in Atlanta, was surprised to hear that the $50 000 had never reached the Caravan Community Project in the Karoo town of Carnarvon. She had also not heard of the investigation conducted on behalf of Danish donor DanCurch Aid which implicated Boesak in the misappropriation of
The Coca-Cola Foundation made the donation to the FPJ in April 1992 on the understanding that the money would be passed on to the Caravan Community Project for the building of a creche and other facilities. Boesak signed an undertaking that any money not used by Caravan would be returned to the Coca-Cola Foundation.
A year later, the donors wrote to the FPJ asking how much of the money had been spent so far on Caravan. FPJ accountant Freddy Steenkamp replied that half of the donation had already been handed over.
In fact, Caravan never received more than R10 000 from the FPJ. In addition to the money which the Coca-Cola Foundation intended for Caravan, DanChurch Aid sent the FPJ the equivalent of R53 000 for the same project.
“At the time the grant was given the FPJ had met our criteria,” Traubert said. “We accepted their reports in good faith.”