The inquiry into Cricket South Africa (CSA) was set to continue on Thursday after hearing testimony on Wednesday in defence of chief executive Gerald Majola, accused of financial mismanagement.
The commission, chaired by Judge Chris Nicholson, was announced by Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula after KPMG recommended that CSA’s remuneration and travel allowance policy be reviewed.
A KPMG audit found that bonus payments had been kept secret from CSA’s remuneration committee, and that CSA CEO Gerald Majola had breached the Companies Act on at least four occasions.
On Wednesday, the commission heard that Majola had not lied when he paid himself bonuses.
AK Khan, who headed the commission that cleared Majola based on the KPMG report, said CSA had invested a lot of money in the investigation and that nobody could claim Majola was a liar.
“I believe, R5- or R6-million later, so far, to this date, nobody has told us about dishonesty, theft, criminality or money missing as yet,” Khan said.
John Blair, the chairperson of CSA’s audit committee, said the committee did not believe Majola had intended to lie.
“That is the finding that we had: that he was not dishonest, that he did it based on previous events and what had transpired in previous events,” Blair said.
“As far as we were concerned, he did the same as previously and there was no problem in that.”
Blair said there was not enough evidence to give Majola a stronger sanction.
“Perhaps there were irregularities and certain people could make out that there were problems, but in the interest of cricket we needed to go forward and make decisions,” Blair said.
“We came out with the finding that there was not sufficient fiduciary evidence.” — Sapa