Johannesburg - A shocking tale of mismanagement,
dereliction of duty and financial abuse has played out at the Estate Agency
Affairs Board (EAAB) for the past six years.
A forensic report requested by the board found that Nomonde
Mapetla, the dismissed chief executive of the EAAB, benefited herself during
her tenure of office, allowing the board’s administration to go to pieces.
Because of allegations of
irregularities, her contract was cut short on February 28 this year with full payment to July 15, when it would have expired.
After her dismissal, the EAAB board members asked Deloitte
Risk Advisory to investigate allegations that she had acted improperly.
The findings
of Deloitte's final report, released to the EAAB on August 19, were that Mapetla
had violated the EAAB's rules and regulations and had demonstrated an absence
of transparent leadership.
Over the past week Sake24 has
inspected this document, which is not yet in the public domain.
Industry players believe it to be in the public
interest for the report to be released in due course.
In the report Deloitte makes it very clear that
Mapetla refused to cooperate with the investigation.
The report is being released based on the evidence made
available and without her response to the allegations and the evidence
collected, says the report.
Deloitte's investigation was held up by various
obstacles, including ongoing resistance from the EAAB staff to provide the
investigating team with the documents requested.
A further stumbling block was the confusion over
Mapetla's laptops. The computer handed to the investigating team was not the
one given to her and access was never gained to a second laptop, which she had
used until leaving the EAAB.
Deloitte confirmed that no documents or records of her
academic and professional qualifications, such as set out in her 2004 contract
of employment, could be found.
For the past couple of years thousands of estate
agents nationwide have had to work without their Fidelity Fund certificates,
their "licences" to operate as estate agents in terms of the Agency Affairs Act.
The investigating team was unable to obtain reliable statistics
of the number of Fidelity fund certificates issued by the EAAB between 2007 and
2011. But hundreds of certificates that had never been posted to agents were
found in a storeroom at the EAAB's Hyde Park head office in Johannesburg.
Deloitte found that the EAAB's legal and compliance
division, which was responsible for issuing the certificates, had had to manage
without proper guidance from management.
Mapetla was found to have been guilty of wasteful
expenditure and not adhering to the EAAB's travel policy.
According to the report, her domestic travelling
expenditure of R116 385 and
that for international travelling, R205 013, fell outside
the guidelines of the board's travel policy.
She was also alleged to have misused a corporate First
National Bank credit card in failing to obtain the necessary approval and
failing to declare it to the board.
She was allegedly not authorised to use EAAB funds to
pay for her credit card expenditure.
The report refers to "prima facie evidence of fraud"
amounting to R88 963
through the use of a credit card.
Mapetla was initially appointed for three years, after
which she was paid on a monthly basis for eight months until her contract was
renewed for a further three years.
Deloitte could find no record that her services had
been approved on a monthly basis or that the renewal of her three-year contract
had been sanctioned by the board.
The investigating team found that certain allegations
against her were unfounded.
No proof could be found of either an alleged payment
of R400 000 to
a staff member, or of a R10 000 payment to her husband.
The allegation that she
had deliberately inflated the annual statistics of the Fidelity fund
certificates was also unfounded.
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