The Serious Commercial Crime Investigation executed search seizure warrants on Friday morning at the South African Football Association’s office, also known as Safa House.
Hawks spokesperson, Colonel Katlego Mogale, said in a statement: “The warrants were prompted by allegations of fraud and theft amounting to R1.3 million.
“The allegations are that between 2014 and 2018, the president of Safa (Danny Jordaan) used the organisation’s resources for his personal gain, including hiring a private security company for his personal protection, a public relations company, without authorisation from the Safa board.
“The [Safa] president is also reported to have violated Safa statutes, thus prejudicing Safa an actual loss of R1.3-million. During the search, a laptop, external hard drives, a USB and documents were seized.”
Mission to expose wrongdoing
Former Safa national executive committee member, Willie Mooka, has previously said he opened a case against Jordaan, the Safa president. Mooka and other former Safa executive members, such as Gay Mokoena, have been on a mission to expose Safa’s wrongdoings and mismanagement of funds.
They accused Jordaan of running the organisation like his own fiefdom, and flouting corporate governance principles and violating Safa statutes. Jordaan and the national association have pleaded innocence regarding the allegations.
Safa was not available to comment on the latest developments at the time of publishing.
Infighting is like a long-running soapie at Safa. Even after a hugely successful run by Bafana Bafana in the Ivory Coast Afcon could not stop the bickering at Safa House. On February 25, Sunday World reported about the spat between the Safa technical director, Walter Steenbok, and head of women’s football, Romaney Pinnock.
Things came to a head when women’s football league sponsors Hollywood Bets, organised a workshop.
Power struggles
Pinnock was scheduled to give a keynote presentation during the symposium, but Steenbok told the event organiser to remove her from the programme.
Pinnock insisted she would attend. Steenbok then instructed Safa security to stop Pinnock from entering Safa House offices, which they did.
Power struggles clearly lie at the heart of the tussles at Safa as Pinnock wants to report to Safa CEO Lydia Monyepao and not Steenbok.
This is a developing story…
