Myeni cleared on foreign account allegations
|Published
Siphamandla Goge
SAA board chairwoman Dudu Myeni is mulling legal action after being exonerated of allegations she had siphoned more than R250 million into foreign bank accounts.
Myeni, who came out smelling of roses after reportedly being investigated for more than a year by private eye Paul O’Sullivan, said she was more concerned about the tarnished image of SAA and how the allegations had distracted from the organisation’s turnaround plans.
Commenting for the first time about the scandal, Myeni told Business Report that she was extremely offended and hurt by the outrageously false stories from a reputable private investigator.
“It is clearly counter productive to the effort that the board, management and staff at SAA are putting into returning the business to relative stability through the 90-day action plan and thereafter the LTTS (long-term turnaround strategy),” Myeni said.
She said that her attorneys were dealing with the matter and would advise on the way forward.
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It could so easily have been avoided by running some simple verification. Their publication and distribution of these falsehoods to such important people and others was hugely damaging to both me and SAA,” Myeni added.
This is the latest in a litany of problems engulfing the parastatal, which has recently taken on an ambitious turnaround plan.
It emerged during the weekend that efforts were afoot to destabilise the already struggling airline, following the circulation of documents showing that Myeni had two overseas bank accounts.
The documents collectively showed more than R250m, presumably received from the irregular involvement in deals.
The documents appear to be bank statements from Bank Austria in Vienna and BNP Paribas in France.
George van Niekerk, a director at law firm ENSafrica, said after investigations it had emerged that these bank documents were fake.
ENSafrica was tasked by the SAA board to investigate the matter, after the documents were submitted to it by O’Sullivan.
“The bank account statement which purports to contain funds in excess of R200m is fake,” Van Niekerk said.
“The bank concerned has confirmed that the signatories on the document, which supposedly emanated from the bank, are not employees of the bank and that the document appears to be a forgery,” he added.
According to Independent News and Media SA (INMSA), of which Business Report is a part, O’Sullivan had demanded Myeni’s immediate resignation “before sunset” after obtaining the documents from what he, at the time, had reportedly called a reliable source.
O’Sullivan later apologised to Myeni after discovering that the documents were fake.
INMSA quoted O’Sullivan as offering Myeni at least R50 000 to let the matter go, after he had discovered that the documents he was relying on were not authentic.
The latest scandal comes just as the embattled airline was running out of time to implement its latest turnaround strategy – the 90-day-action plan, which expires March 24.
The plan is aimed at changing SAA’s financial fortunes, and its key features include closing loss-making international routes between Johannesburg and Beijing in China and Mumbai in India.
Facing off
The airline’s turnaround strategy has already been overshadowed by a showdown between the board and its suspended chief executive, Monwabisi Kalawe.
Both parties are set to face-off before an independent external chairman on March 16. Kalawe is facing a disciplinary process following allegations of misconduct.
Myeni said the latest drama derailed the airline’s quest to transform into a sustainable business. She was, however, unable to say who could be behind the malicious claims, but said this was probably only one incident in a broader campaign to discredit her and the airline.
“The more important question is why and for whom would O’Sullivan put (in) so much time and energy and then after all that find nothing – and then have to create these bogus accounts,” Myeni said.
Meanwhile, she denied that she had defied Public Enterprises Minister Lynn Brown when she reportedly ordered the SAA board to re-instate Kalawe.