Corry Ihuhua
18 November 2008
FIRST National Bank of Namibia (FNB) yesterday claimed that there is no conflict of interest in its sponsorship of four Namibia Premier League (NPL) teams last week.
FNB spokesmen Dixon Norval and Cassius Moetie denied that the current positions of their chief executive officer, Vekuii Rukoro, and board member Ranga Haikali were in conflict with the deals that were first announced between Black Africa and African Stars.
FNB late last week added Tigers and Oshakati City to the stable to benefit from a N$1,2 million sponsorship deal for the season that started last weekend.
Business tycoon Haikali recently took ownership of Black Africa as the sole owner, while Rukoro is a staunch African Stars supporter and heads the bank.
In a statement by Norval and Moetie, they conceded that their boss was indeed a die-hard Stars supporter in his private capacity, but was not party to the process of selecting the beneficiary clubs, while the talks on sponsoring Black Africa started some time before Haikali took over BA.
They said the negotiations (BA and Haikali) were not shared with FNB by Black Africa or Haikali and could thus not have played a role in choosing any specific club.
"In short, neither Haikali nor any other director of FNB's Board have been party to the new innovation initiated by the Strategic Marketing and Communications Department," it countered.
Moetie currently serves on the executive committee of BA, but the bank justified this by saying that there re other senior staff at FNB who are staunch supporters of other clubs and they equally had no influence on the business decision of which club to support.
They further explained that a process was followed where management (not the board) applied several business criteria to narrow down choices.
"The clubs with current sponsors were obviously first eliminated.
The top clubs were then invited to show their interest in the FNB offer, the first two that responded were BA and Stars," they said.
NO CLARITY
FNB has not disclosed how much each team stands to benefit this season and for how long, or whether there were standing agreements in place because there were no formal signings made at the announcements.
The bank tried to get around that question by stating that it agreed, at the request of the clubs, that the specific breakdown be treated as confidential information as each club has its own plans and approach to becoming professional.
But it seems that despite their respective proposals they submitted to the bank, the money will be split equally among the four, which amounts to at least N$200 000 per club.
The question of branding exclusivity for the teams sponsored by the bank was also not explained clearly.
At the moment, MTC is set to sponsor premiership teams with gear bearing their logo at the front, like they did a season ago.
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