DCEC better not fool us
Mmegi Editor | Friday March 16, 2018 10:12
This happened days after what appeared like a covert operation that saw DCEC agents camping out at Maele’s house. On Sunday morning, the minister was taken to the DCEC offices to explain the large sums of money found in his yard. Maele has since denied knowledge of the origins of the money and claimed that he was being set-up. He even offered to be finger-printed to absolve himself from the case.
We commend the DCEC for being alert to this issue and following it up because the money could be proceeds of crime. However, without prejudicing the matter, we implore the DCEC to d§o more to get to the bottom of the issue. The DCEC investigations must be broadened because if Maele’s claims of a set up are to believed, this could be bigger than just the P50,000 found in the bin.
With reports that the security fence at the yard was cut and the barbed wire on top of the gate moved and found out of place, this is bigger than we might think. Our sources say that people believed to be security agents had camped out near the house throughout the day and night since Thursday until the raid on Saturday morning. Surely with criminals roaming the Gaborone streets at night, and the security at the place not so good, they might have been tempted to use the house, or at least attempted to find something valuable for their mission in the yard.
Maele could be right when he says someone is trying to implicate him. It could be the ruling party internal politics playing out to the gallery.
The DCEC investigation should be broad to catch and bring to book those who are behind the offence. We believe their informant has also been thoroughly interrogated to clear some of the questions lingering in our minds. Many people ask themselves questions like; Who knew that there was money hidden there and reported the matter?
How did that person find out that there was money in that unoccupied house? Our wish, we repeat, is for DCEC to get to the bottom of this scandal. With the recent case of money laundering with public funds being misused for personal gains at the National Petroleum Fund, one would not be wrong to think that this could also be public funds because no person in their sane mind would risk losing their hard earned cash by stashing it, or hiding it in a rubbish bin in an unoccupied lot.
Today’s thought
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorises it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
– Frédéric Bastiat