Sorovaki Steps Up
Fiji Rugby Union chief executive officer John O’Connor has volunteered to take his annual leave to allow an independent audit at Rugby House.
National operations manager Sale Sorovaki has been appointed by the board to be acting CEO.
In a press conference at Fiji Rugby House yesterday, board chairman Commodore Humphrey Tawake cleared speculations on social media regarding the matter.
This comes after the termination of three staff. The grounds regarding the trio’s termination was not disclosed.
“CEO O’Connor has voluntarily taken his annual leave for the betterment of the administration.
“That is his annual leave. He has not been suspended or fired from FRU.”
Tawake said it was timely to have an internal and holistic audit to review the procedures and processes at 35 Gordon Street.
The audit which is carried by Binder Dijker Otte (BDO) was initially planned to be held at the end of the year.
The last audit was carried out by Ernst & Young about three years ago as confirmed by Tawake.
“Certain development has occurred in Fiji Rugby House the last three to four weeks,” he said.
“The board has taken initial steps to ensure that proper governance and accountability and transparency is evident at all times at Fiji Rugby House.
“In having said that, we had to terminate three staff members, I will not divulge their names because of ongoing investigations.
“We had initially planned for an internal audit, governance, financial and human resource audit into our systems and processes within FRU.
“We have appointed BDO as the accounting firm to conduct that governance and finance audit, to explore how we can improve the system and processes that we have within FRU.
“FRU has not had one for quite a while so it is timely now.”
Tawake assured that all FRU programmes will continue with the men’s preparing for Los Angeles 7s and the Rugby World Cup 7s in South Africa in October.
“We will look at the holistic organisation where were are and how we can better improve to move forward to be an efficient organisation in the future.
“The BDO inquiry is expected to take a couple of weeks.
“At the end of that we will be able to see the areas we can improve in and improve our systems and processes, to ensure that everything is transparent in compliance to World Rugby and to the Fijian community at large.”
Asked if Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption (FICAC) is involved, Tawake replied: “At this point, no. This is the internal processes that we have, only after the BDO enquiry and investigation are completed then we will determine if it is necessary to involve FICAC, only time will tell.
“We have the preliminary investigation into the board sub-committee so we thought it will be prudent that we look at the holistic organisation rather than concentrating on one area.
“That’s why we brought in BDO to conduct the inquiry into our audit, governance, HR and our finance.”
“I think it will be unfair for me because it is still not fully investigated to divulge what the allegations are.
“When time comes then we will inform the Fiji Rugby public of what’s happening.”
Feedback: sereana.salalo@fijisun.com.fj
