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Nyoka: Shame on Cricket SA

Johannesburg - The Cricket SA board should be ashamed of its involvement in corruption and not he, former CSA president Mtutuzeli Nyoka said.

"The [corruption] allegations against me were taken as is without questions by the board... As far as I am concerned the shame is not with me, it is with them," he said in Pretoria.

Nyoka was addressing the sport ministry's committee of inquiry into financial affairs at CSA.

He was ousted on October 15 after a vote of no confidence by the board.

"It felt like an action designed to remove an individual who was asking questions," he told the inquiry.

He said he had no intention of returning to cricket administration, but hoped the latest inquiry would clear his name and restore his reputation.

Nyoka was ousted in February after he made repeated calls for an independent inquiry into CSA finances and bonuses paid to staff including CSA CEO Gerald Majola.

He won a high court case for his reinstatement, and on his return announced that a forensic investigation should be held to restore the public's trust. CSA agreed to an independent KPMG audit.

Nyoka continued to call for action after Majola was found to have breached the Companies' Act in at least four instances.

He was again dismissed in October for allegedly disregarding majority decisions of CSA's board and damaging its reputation.

"It felt like an action designed to remove an individual who was asking questions," he said.

Nyoka said on Friday that he felt hostility from board members after taking a stand against Majola.

He said he got wind of a plot to have him dismissed as president, but that this was denied at a board meeting in November 2010.

"... But obviously there was something going on," he said.

Nyoka said he had disagreed with the CSA's decision in August 2010 to hold an internal inquiry into the misallocation of R4.5 million in bonuses, after it was agreed at three board meetings that an external inquiry was needed.

"Our board was in no position to investigate a situation as politically inflamed as this one," he said.

"What they were doing was wrong."

Four representatives of the auditing firm KPMG appeared before the committee on Wednesday, the opening day of oral representations.

In their report, they found that the bonuses were kept secret from the CSA's remuneration committee, with Majola breaching the Companies Act on at least four occasions.

They also found irregularities in travel allowances and expenses.

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