The South African Rugby Union (Saru) can no longer ignore the contents of a report by audit firm KPMG into its chief executive, Jurie Roux. Two top administrators, one former and one current, told Sunday Times the allegations against Roux were of such a grave nature that Saru are compelled to act.Beeld newspaper, which has a copy of the report, wrote this week that while Roux was senior director of finance at Stellenbosch University, he had made unauthorised payments to the university's rugby club to the tune of R35-million.story_article_left1Roux was the treasurer of the club at the time and the unauthorised transfers occurred between 2002 and 2010.One provincial boss who insisted he not be named said: "Questions are being asked and those questions need answers. Ultimately the image of rugby is at stake."He speculated that Saru's reluctance to deal with the matter was rooted in the fact that Roux has greater powers than most of his predecessors.The former administrator agrees."What we know is that South Africa's rugby bosses aren't brave. They backed him hoping the issue would just blow over."The option open to them is to maybe suspend him with pay pending an investigation. They can't just fire him because they may leave themselves open to litigation."On Friday Saru appeared to be distancing itself from Roux when it released a statement refuting that they were aware of an inquiry into Roux's employment at the university before they appointed him.It stressed that the vetting process was done "entirely by an external recruitment company".story_article_right2They added that the company had interviewed the candidates, drew up a short list and made a recommendation to the general council. They concluded the release by saying, "the recommendation in regard to Jurie Roux did not include any suggestion of an inquiry into his employment at Stellenbosch University".The former administrator did, however, raise an issue which a current office bearer also found to be odd."The question has to be whether more people at the university knew about this. I find it peculiar that only two people, Chris de Beer [former head of student fees] and Jurie supposedly knew about this."At the time all the universities were spending lots of money on establishing strong Varsity Cup sides. In fact, Maties won it the first three years."The university said it could not comment until it sought legal counsel.The Saru executive will apparently find time to discuss the matter next Friday...