By James Crook

160556603March 6 - The crisis-hit South African Football Association (SAFA) is set for more unwelcome attention after President of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC) Gideon Sam ordered a probe into alleged match fixing in the South African national team's warm-up games before the 2010 FIFA World Cup.


In December last year, SAFA president Kirsten Nematandani and four other leading officials were suspended following a FIFA report after allegations emerged that they had been involved in the fixing of friendly matches against Thailand, Bulgaria, Colombia and Guatemala with convicted match-fixer Wilson Raj Perumal and his company Football4U.

World football governing body FIFA said in the report that the match-fixing could not have happened without interference from South African officials, but the suspensions dished out to the alleged offenders have since been withdrawn.

"SAFA is a member of SASCOC and we have picked up things here and there and we just want to verify issues," Sam said following the meeting between the two parties.

"Top of the list was the whole issue of match-fixing.

"We wanted to get an update on where we are and the response we got, and which is to our satisfaction is that there are two process that will be running parallel,"

A three-man SAFA panel consisting of Legal Committee chairman Poobie Govindasamy, chairman of Security, Protocol and Fairplay Jan Koopman and vice-president Chief Mwelo Nonkonyana will investigate the issues of governance and share their findings with SASOC.

GideonSam0803SASCOC President Gideon Sam has ordered a probe into alleged match-fixing in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa

"The other part of that issue of course is the issue of governance." said Sam.

"There is a feeling that issues were not dealt with in a proper manner within SAFA and SAFA's legal commission is dealing with the matter and they are coming to us and asking us for assistance in putting together an independent commission that can deal with these issues.

"The view amongst all of us here is that we should proceed with this commission to see whether we can get to the bottom of the governance issues within SAFA.

"We have decided that yes there will be a commission and the three gentlemen from SAFA will come to me and bring us the terms of reference.

"We were assured by Safa that they will engage with us and we will engage with them."

SAFA are believed to be 100 million Rand (£7.3 million/ €8.5 million/$11 million) in debt and were under fire earlier this year when a document emerged alleging that over a third of the profits from the 2010 FIFA World Cup staged in the country were spent on vehicles, including a fleet of luxury Mercedes-Benz's for Executive Committee members, 50 per cent of who World Cup Legacy Trust chairman Danny Jordaan said were unemployed.

The document also claimed that Jordaan also awarded himself a 5 million Rand (£370,000/€420,000/$550,000) severance package.

SAFA have strongly denied these allegations, and have threatened legal action against two publications that published reports on the document.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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