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Safa’s legal woes are rapidly escalating as it faces a looming charge of perjury by its former chief executive officer (CEO), Leslie Sedibe, for allegedly lying to the high court in a sworn statement last year.
Sedibe told City Press that he would lay a perjury charge against Safa bosses in the coming days, after they accused him of being ill-prepared for a court trial set to take place on Friday, February 22.
The trial was postponed at Sedibe’s request, saying he needed more time to go through documents that were sent to his lawyers by Safa four days before the trial.
Sedibe approached the courts to force Safa to hand over material documents that it shared with Fifa during a match-fixing investigation which found him guilty.
The courts ordered Safa to deliver a list of documents he had requested.
“Safa gave me everything I did not want after the court ordered them to hand over information. But just four days before going to trial, those documents that I have been asking for for two years miraculously appeared and were sent to my lawyers.
“Safa falsely claimed that they had no idea of the existence of these documents, which is where they perjured themselves because they stated this in a sworn statement last year. It is now their version that the said information had been in their possession since 2015,” he said.
The trial date that was set for last Friday was moved after both legal teams agreed for a postponement at Sedibe’s request.
But it was a Safa press release – issued thereafter, insinuating that Sedibe was clutching at straws because his case was weak, and that he had changed his claim and case – that rattled Sedibe’s cage.
“The root cause of the postponement was that in January 2019 – more than two and a half years after first launching the case – Mr Sedibe materially changed the nature of his claim against Safa,” reads part of Safa’s press release.
Sedibe is now demanding an unconditional retraction, accusing Safa of lying and defamation.
But Safa is standing by its statement.
When a journalist called for comment, Safa spokesperson Dominic Chimhavi accused the journalist of being “pathetic” before forwarding the lawyers’ response to Sedibe’s demands for a retraction.
“We do not accept that the media statement issued by our client is defamatory, still less that it is unlawful and/or false. Our client therefore declines to withdraw its press release,” the letter reads.
Safa’s acting CEO, Russell Paul, said the association would give no further comment.
