Former Cricket SA (CSA) remuneration committee chairman Paul Harris confirmed on Thursday that Cricket SA (CSA) employees had been paid undeclared bonuses.
This happened after South Africa hosted the 2009 Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament, he told a committee of inquiry into the financial affairs of CSA in Pretoria.
Harris was ousted by the CSA board when the allegations of underhanded bonus payments first surfaced last year.
He said CSA CEO Gerald Majola and former CSA chief operations officer Don McIntosh were paid double bonuses for their involvement in the Twenty20 competition.
“Up to 2006, the bonus policy was that staff and executives got the 13th cheque, and the feeling was that the executives should get bigger bonuses,” Harris said.
The remuneration committee then decided that the bonuses would be three times the salary and only for outstanding work.
“When the IPL came at short notice, it was decided that the board would pay Majola and McIntosh seven times their salary, including reward for IPL performance,” Harris said.
“But there was an unaccounted R1.75 million for Majola, and R1.47m for McIntosh, received for both tournaments.”
Harris was the fifth person to give an oral representation to the committee, chaired by Judge Chris Nicholson.
Four representatives of KPMG appeared before the committee on Wednesday, the opening day of the oral representations.
Harris said there should have been transparency in the 2009 IPL contract, signed between the IPL and CSA, of which only Majola knew the full details.
“The issue here is disclosure,” Harris said.
“In my view, both parties' chief executives (Lalit Modi and Majola) should have waived the confidentiality clause of the contract for the tournament.
“If you are contracted on behalf of your employer to negotiate with a third party, it has to be with the knowledge of your employer that you have a personal interest in it.”
Harris said he believed the failure to declare bonuses had started with the inaugural Twenty20 World Cup held in South Africa in 2007, headed by former CSA employee Steve Elworthy.
“I suppose it all started at the 2007 tournament where there were unauthorised payments, and we did take it into consideration,” he said.
“Elworthy got a bonus. The money was meant to come to CSA and then be dispersed. I believe that it created a precedent of non-disclosure of payments.”
Northerns cricket union president Vincent Sinovich spoke after Harris.
Northerns was one of few bodies to openly support former CSA president Mtutuzeli Nyoka when he was given a vote of no confidence for the second time in October.
The inquiry was announced by Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula on November 4 after a KPMG report recommended that CSA's remuneration and travel allowance policy be reviewed.
The KPMG report found the bonuses were kept secret from CSA's remuneration committee, with Majola breaching the Companies Act on at least four occasions.
Nyoka will give his presentation to the committee on Friday morning. – Sapa