Morupisi denies financing charity with public funds
Mpho Mokwape | Monday November 21, 2022 06:00
The convicted Morupisi denied the allegations on Wednesday when he took the stand to give a colourful picture of his supposedly long-distinguished public and community service detailed in a curriculum vitae explaining that he had no idea where the pension money went but rather used his own to make donations.
At the time he was reading about his distinguished public service and his strong community service, public prosecutor Priscilla Israel told him that he cannot be boasting about donations when he knows it was stolen money.
“Your list of donations is that long because you were doing it with stolen money, is that not so?” she asked.
Israel also accused Morupisi of listing all the things he had done where some do not even have dates and times, which to the naked eye does not appear authentic and that he might be lying about those achievements as the prosecution has no way of verifying the truth.
The prosecutor, who was irked that they were taken by surprise when Morupisi said he was mitigating after previously indicating otherwise, she was not having it at all trying to throw all punches at Morupisi. She argued that the former PSP could not leave the public service while he was still at the pinnacle because he benefited by stealing public funds.
However, Morupisi was quick to say it was not true because he had never stolen any public funds and that he had no idea where the money went. “I had a long and distinguished career as a civil servant. I dedicated my entire productive life to serving the public. I joined the public service in 1983 and retired in 2020, a period of 37 years. I rose through the ranks to the pinnacle of public service at PSP and I chose service to this nation than profit. So there is no truth that I used stolen money,” he said.
He explained that he had enjoyed high social standing in society because he held a powerful and influential position in government and that he had to be dragged to court and charged with criminal offences, which was humiliating.
Morupisi, in his papers read by his attorney Busang Manewe, explained that he was no doubt a leading example of patriotism and that he was a decorated civil servant who earned so many awards and honours including being a recipient of the Presidential Order of Honour for his dedicated and selfless service to the nation.
All this supposedly colourful curriculum vitae (CV) was meant to serve as strong mitigation to his sentence for the court to use its discretion looking that he had 37-year public service without any criminal conduct.
He also argued that he had lost so much money both on his legal matters and that he had already paid for the vehicle he is accused of purchasing with public funds with his own monies and that there was no prospect of recovering the money.
“R630,000 has gone down the drain.
I have been fighting from two fronts in paying legal bills for the conduct of my defence in both criminal proceedings and the civil forfeiture application from prosecution,” he explained.
The embattled Morupisi also said he was now a pensioner, having retired from public service upon the expiry of his contract in 2020 and that the implication of being a pensioner was that he no longer commands the financial resources that he used to when he was actively employed and earning a salary.
He told the court that he was a man with constrained earning capacity and does not have sufficient resources to meet a robust fine and that it was for that reason the court should consider giving him a nominal fine given the financial loss that he has already suffered.
“When the court takes these factors into consideration, they favour the awarding of a modest fine. In the event that the court many find a prison term appropriate, I submit on the strength of what I said, I have made a compelling case for a wholly suspended prison sentences,” he said.