PAPER TRAIL: Panel recommends ‘removal’ of Athletics SA president over credit card abuse

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> Athletics South Africa president James Moloi has been found to have used his ASA credit facility as a ‘personal slush card’.

Suspended Athletics South Africa (ASA) president James Moloi treated the federation’s credit card “like his own personal slush card”, an independent disciplinary panel has found.

The panel, chaired by retired Judge President Basheer Waglay, found Moloi misused the federation’s corporate credit card and has recommended that he be removed from office.

The charge sheet accused him of using the card for personal purchases including liquor, clothing, an electronic device, a cash advance, groceries, meals, travel, fuel and tyres. The panel found that, at the very least, the transactions it examined were “personal, unauthorised or unsubstantiated”.

In its 55-page findings, dated 6 October 2026, the panel’s report was scathing. It said the evidence painted “a picture of a president treating the corporate credit card as his own personal slush card, available for whatever or whenever he needed it, provided that he marked the transaction as business-related.”

It also found him guilty of receiving a dual benefit of drawing an R18,000 monthly president’s allowance for April 2024 while continuing to use the card that the allowance was meant to replace.

The case began at a meeting of the parliamentary sport, arts and culture committee, where ASA presented its 2023/2024 financial report. Concerns were raised about the president’s use of the corporate card.

The South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) then instructed Forvis Mazars Forensic Services to investigate. Its report, sent to Sascoc on 11 September 2025, found that the card had been used 399 times between May 2023 and April 2024, and that there was prima facie evidence that Moloi had misused it. The charges put the total for that period at more than R300,000.

ASA levelled four charges at Moloi. The first was “failure to account for corporate card expenditure”.

The second was more detailed, accusing Moloi of “exceeding the corporate card monthly spending limit of R15,000 nine out of the 12 months of the period from May 2023 to April 2024.”

The report said that Moloi used the ASA corporate credit card for expenditure that was “personal, unauthorised or not adequately substantiated as ASA business expenditure”.

It also noted that he was “charged with the failure to maintain and submit sufficient documentation to establish that the expenditure was for ASA business.”

The fourth charge related to the dual benefit of the spending R18,000 monthly allowance and still using the company credit card.

The panel dismissed two of the four charges against Moloi. Its findings were unanimous. Alongside Waglay, it comprised Nellie Tiyago, nominated by the Confederation of African Athletics, and Valentine Bushelo, nominated by Sascoc.