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Suspended Athletics South Africa (ASA) president James Moloi will finally face a fresh disciplinary hearing over his alleged abuse of the federation credit card.
Council members at the ASA AGM in Johannesburg yesterday adopted a report by the Southern African Confederation of Athletics (Saca) president Zakhele Dlamini who looked into the matter and recommended Moloi face a new disciplinary process.
Moloi is to remain suspended.
The matter has dragged on for a year since Moloi’s free-spending on his ASA credit card was highlighted in a parliamentary committee meeting, resulting in the auditing firm, Forvis Mazars, being brought in.
The firm found that, from May 2023 to April 2024, Moloi had spent more than R300,000 in 399 transactions, of which 177 were made at bottle stores, clothing shops, iStores, SupaQuick Tyre Services and as cash withdrawals. Moloi claimed they were for ASA business.
Dlamini said of the auditor’s report: “The findings further indicated that the ASA president failed to comply with the ASA credit card policy because he did not have receipts of the expenditure and did not adhere to the monthly limit of R15,000.
“There were no monthly reconciliation reports and not all transactions that appeared on the bank statements were recorded at the ASA offices.”
Forvis Mazars also wanted Moloi to give a full explanation to the board of each transaction and pay any money back that wasn’t deemed ASA business.
“The president was further to pay back a sum of R24,841.95, which was also found to have been wrongfully used by the president while he had already been directed to stop using the credit card because he was by then getting a monthly allowance of R18,000.”
The auditor recommended action against Moloi as well as acting CEO Terrence Magogodela and CFO Mphoase Shembeni for failing to comply with the credit card policy.
According to the Saca report, Moloi denied knowledge of an ASA credit card policy and said he had not been asked for missing receipts. He also had repaid the nearly R25,000 demanded by the auditor.
Selby Thabethe, an ASA council member, presided over the case in December and dismissed it on the basis that the suspension letter had been signed by Magogodela, “an official that was also implicated in the report”.
The ASA board had agreed to reinstate Moloi after the disciplinary ruling, but that was never “effected” because the board was divided on the issue, the report read.
The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) had told the ASA board to start the process anew, but World Athletics (WA) were roped in, with the international body’s CEO writing a letter last month in which he said he had been informed that Moloi had been reinstated in February.
The Saca investigation was initiated.
Dlamini found the disciplinary hearing that cleared Moloi had been flawed on a few grounds. For starters, it comprised one person. The ASA constitution refers to a standing five-person disciplinary committee, which requires three people to be quorate.
The WA constitution demands that disciplinary members be independent, but Thabethe was an ASA council member.
“To me the technical objection did not decide the outcome of the alleged misconduct against the president,” Dlamini added in his report. “The matter is not permanently closed and can legally be reopened.”
Dlamini recommended that ASA, Sascoc and the African athletics body, the CAA, each appoint one member of a three-member panel to hear the case, while ASA also picks a prosecutor.
He said once the committee was convened, the matter should take no more than four weeks.
Moloi is objecting to a new disciplinary process.