Former executives of Dimension Data violated the law when they oversaw the sale of the company’s head office without adequate conflict of interest disclosures, its CEO Werner Kapp said.

BusinessLIVE reports that Kapp’s comments come after a tipoff in an anonymous letter that an independent investigation into the 2019 transaction meant to boost the company’s BEE credentials had found evidence that allegedly implicated executives who engaged in unethical and illegal activities to line their pockets.

Although Kapp confirmed that Dimension Data’s parent – Japan’s Nippon Telegraph & Telephone – had ordered the investigation, he said the preliminary findings from the report did not reveal any irregularities in the negotiation or conclusion of the transaction, which saw the property known as The Campus being offloaded to Identity Partners, a black-owned investment house founded by veteran banker and Discovery Holdings board member Sonja de Bruyn.

‘What it did reveal was the presence of certain conflicts of interest, which were not disclosed to the company at that point in time,’ he said, declining to disclose the identities of those involved as the company considered potential legal recourse.

‘The preliminary findings of this investigation basically revealed to us that certain executives did not reveal their personal financial interests in The Campus (transaction), which is required by the Companies Act and also required by our internal policies and procedures.’

Kapp said the company had taken steps to ensure the transaction was not reversed.

‘We have taken the decision to ratify The Campus transaction, subject to dealing with the exit of the executives in a manner which preserves the original objectives of this transaction. Based on that step, which we took today, the BEE status remains unchanged,’ he said.

Full BusinessLIVE report