Suspended SAA chief commercial officer Sylvain Bosc wants his deposit back after renting a R9.3m house in Hyde Park, Johannesburg, but homeowner Yoni Titi says the money is needed to replace or fix everything the Frenchman and his family allegedly broke while living in the mansion, according to a Sunday Times report.

Bosc paid a R97 500 deposit to rent the house before he and his wife, Fabienne, and their three children – two of school-going age and a toddler – moved in in August 2014. Titi kept R40 000 of the deposit when the family moved out in March last year. Bosc has asked the Randburg Magistrate’s Court to compel his former landlady to pay back R37 000.

But in her responding papers, Titi accuses the Bosc family of causing tens of thousands of rands’ damage to the property. In his particulars of claim, Bosc denies causing all the damage, and says Titi was only entitled to R2 903 of the deposit – for damaged crockery, a burnt cushion, a Telkom phone account and to replace a soap dispenser in one bathroom. Everything else was damaged before he moved in, he claims. The report notes Bosc was suspended from SAA in November last year for allegedly costing the troubled parastatal millions of rands in a deal to launch a route to Abu Dhabi.

Full Sunday Times report (subscription needed)