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ATLANTA - The FOX 5 I-Team was watching last July as Mayor Kasim Reed and nine city of Atlanta employees boarded Delta flight 72 bound for South Africa. A trip that has sparked two separate investigations including of who paid for what and why.
After battling the city for months, we were finally given the cost. More than $90,000.
They stayed at a luxury waterfront front hotel where everyone stayed. But the real cost was those flights. Most of the city passengers flew on the most expensive ticket possible, Delta's Business Class. It came to an additional $40,000 in flight costs.
After our story, Mayor Reed promised a non-governmental source would pay for those business class tickets. Months later, the city council voted to give $40,000 in city money to a nonprofit Partners for Prosperity, which later wrote a $40,000 check back to the city to cover the cost of those expensive flights.
Partners for Prosperity is actually the nonprofit fundraising arm of Invest Atlanta, the city's economic development agency and chaired by the sitting Mayor.
Elosia Klementich is the Invest Atlanta CEO and also the Chief Financial Officer of Partners for Prosperity. She's not talking right now.
After news accounts of the unusual payments broke, a federal grand jury subpoenaed records relating to the transaction. Invest Atlanta opened its own investigation, which concluded today with a 3 hour behind closed doors meeting.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms wouldn't talk afterward and promised a statement later in the day.
Late Thursday afternoon, around 5 p.m., the statement arrived saying the board investigation found there were "no criminal violations" and "no malfeasance" by Dr. Klementich regarding the payments for the flight, but that Dr. Klementich failed to follow board governance standards.
The board voted to end her current contract and allow her to stay on as CEO as an at-will employee.
She accepted that new role.