By Paul Nicholson
September 21 – South African FA president Danny Jordaan (pictured) and former SAFA president Molefi Oliphant face increased likelihood of criminal prosecution in South Africa following the Democratic Alliance (DA) political party’s laying of criminal charges against them concerning the $10 million that was sent to CONCACAF.
The DA – the opposition party to the ruling ANC party – claim that the money was a bribe for votes for South Africa to host the 2010 World Cup and as such constitute fraud as well as corruption under Section 3 of the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act, 2004.
The DA claims that Jordaan and Oliphant knew the money was a bribe payment, even though the money was transferred to CFU and CONCACAF accounts. The presumption is that they knew it would end up with the then CONCACAF president Jack Warner.
The charges are laid out in an affidavit published on the DA’s website by Mmoba Soloman Malatsi, a member of South Africa’s governing National Assembly and the DA party’s shadow minister for sport and recreation, who uses the US Department of Justice’s indictment as the base to his accusations, but brings new information to the accusations.
The demand for criminal prosecution will come as a body blow to the South Africans who have all along maintained that they had done nothing wrong and the money had never been intended as a bribe but as support for the African diaspora in the Caribbean.
Malatsi outlines the process that led to the transfer of the $10 million that should have been sent to the South African Local Organising Committee but ended up in the hands of Warner.
He shows letters, that were written by Jordaan and Oliphant, and says that “they misrepresented the nature of the US$10 million transaction to disguise a bribe as a legitimate transaction, causing the payment of such bribe.”
He contends that while they may not have been alone in the South African promise of bribes for votes, with other senior LOC members involved in the strategy, they pushed for the transfer of the cash from FIFA to CFU and CONCACAF accounts. He says they did so knowing that the $10 million shortfall that would have resulted for the LOC would needed to have been met by the South African government from taxpayers’ money.
“The US$10 million transferred to the CFU and CONCOCAF bank accounts as the bribe should have been transferred to the LOC. Instead, the South African government transferred the equivalent of US$10 million to the LOC to make up for the shortfall. This unlawful expenditure of tax payers’ money clearly and actually prejudices both the South African state and the public,” says Malatsi.
Malatsi says that Jordaan uses discussions about a 2010 FIFA World Cup Diaspora Legacy Programme with the then Deputy Minister of Finance, Jabu Moleketi, and the then Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, as confirmation of the instruction to send the money direct from FIFA. That money order was signed ultimately by FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke. But he does not blame Valcke for signing the paperwork, saying that he was also the victim of misrepresentation.
“Jordaan and Oliphant appear to have made misrepresentations with respect to the nature of the transaction in an attempt to disguise the payment of the bribe. It appears that these misrepresentations were made to FIFA’s General Secretary, as well as to members of the South African cabinet,” says Malatsi.
He concludes his affidavit saying: “For the reasons set out above, there are grounds to suspect that, inter alios, Jordaan and Oliphant are guilty of, inter alia, the crimes of corruption under section 3 of the Corruption Act and fraud. Accordingly,I request that the South African Police Service open a case against Jordaan and Oliphant in this respect and commence investigation.”
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