Cricket SA recoups travel money as forensic audit looms

Cricket SA officials are in the process of quietly recouping money used for illegitimate private travel by CSA members - including CSA CEO Gerald Majola - ahead of the upcoming forensic audit.

The Sunday Times is in possession of documentation which suggests that a process of "recovery" ahead of the audit is already under way.

When Ishmael Semenya, the member of CSA's legal and governance committee asked to set up the forensic audit was asked yesterday about such a process, he replied: "We will get the auditors view on that."

Earlier in the week Semenya told us that he was meeting an unnamed firm of auditors tomorrow with a view to setting up the audit's "terms of engagement". Later he added: "By the end of the day I hope to have agreed with the auditors on the time line and the way forward."

This blurring of the professional and the private has been a recurring theme at CSA for months now. The Sunday Times initially flagged this immediately after the story on IPL and Champions League bonuses appeared in the Afrikaans press last year. We put a figure of R250000 on unaccounted-for travel expenses but our questions have never satisfactorily been answered, despite the best efforts (or otherwise) of AK Khan's in-house review committee.

The process of accounting for money comes at the same time that CSA have been visited by the taxman. The SA Revenue Service have apparently been looking at CSA's books dating back to 2007 and have undertaken their own audit.