Dismissed Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) CEO Trevor Abrahams’s woes may not be over.
A battle is raging within the CAA board on whether to bring criminal charges against Abrahams and recoup thousands of rands he allegedly misappropriated.
The CAA this week confirmed that the board had still to decide on an appropriate sanction against Abrahams, including whether to bring criminal charges against him.
Abrahams, whose tenure at the CAA ended last week after the board refused to renew his contract, has been found guilty of corruption, dishonesty and abuse of power by a disciplinary inquiry.
The disciplinary inquiry was instituted after a forensic probe found Abrahams guilty of fraud and nepotism.
The inquiry’s report was submitted to the board last week. The Mail & Guardian has a copy of the report. It shows that Abrahams was found guilty of illicitly siphoning thousands of rands from the CAA’s coffers to bankroll lavish private holidays abroad.
Even though Abrahams is no longer a CAA employee, the seven-member CAA board has to make a decision on whether to take further action against him.
A CAA board member this week told the M&G that the board had acquired a legal opinion on the matter. The legal opinion suggested that the board should recoup CAA money from Abrahams and bring criminal charges against him in line with the Public Finance Management Act.
Despite this, the CAA board is divided on what sanction to take against Abrahams.
The board is chaired by Israel Skosana. Other members include Kutso Mampeule, Nothemba Molonzi, Graeme Conlyn, Zukile Nomvete, Puthi Tsukudu, and Major General Lucky Ngema.
Sources in the CAA board said Skosana was leading a faction in the board that was seeking to protect Abrahams from possible criminal prosecution.
Skosana is apparently supported by Conlyn, who according to board members has confessed in a board meeting that Abrahams ”was his scuba-dive instructor”.
Approached for comment on the allegations this week, Maximilian Mathabathe, CAA board spokesperson, said: ”We are not going to respond about board deliberations.”
Mathabathe said the board had yet to make a decision on whether to bring criminal charges against Abrahams.
”The board would decide on that matter soon,” she said.
The last time the CAA board met was last Wednesday. Mathabathe said the issue of bringing criminal charges against Abrahams was not on the agenda at last week’s board meeting.
The M&G has learned, however, that board members did deliberate on the matter.
In that meeting, Skosana’s faction indicated its intentions to oppose any effort to bring criminal charges against Abrahams.
Some board members were furious. They insisted that the findings of the disciplinary inquiry required the board to bring criminal charges against Abrahams.
Among the relevant findings are that Abrahams is:
Guilty of dishonesty, abuse of position and setting a bad example by materially misrepresenting circumstances to Skosana to procure a financial advantage.
Abrahams misrepresented to the CAA the facts surrounding his trip to the United States undertaken in December 2001 so that the CAA would refund him the cost of his private holiday trip. It cost the CAA more than R31 000.
Guilty of ”dishonest failure” to disclose an overpayment of $1 080 (about R7 300 at the current exchange rate) on September 2001.
Speaking to the M&G this week, one board member questioned Skosana’s involvement in deciding on the appropriate sanction against Abrahams, while Skosana was implicated in negligence and dereliction of duty in his dealings with Abrahams by the presiding officer in the latter’s disciplinary inquiry.
In response, Mathabathe said: ”The chairman is not on trial. The findings are on Abrahams.”
The disciplinary hearing also found Abrahams guilty of not disclosing a prior relationship with Trevor Davids, formerly communications manager at the CAA. Abrahams had a cosy relationship with Davids before Davids was appointed as a PR consultant at the CAA, and Abrahams had failed to recuse himself from the interviewing panel which decided to appoint Davids.
The M&G reported last year that Davids had employed Abrahams’s fiancÃ