P326 million: biggest financial scandal in Botswana
Staff Writer | Friday December 8, 2017 17:27
Seretse, Botho Leburu and Kenneth Kerekang were this week remanded in custody after appearing before the Regional Magistrate’s Court facing money-laundering charges in their personal capacities.
They will appear for mention today. According to the charge sheet, the three, between September 5, 2017 and November 27, 2017 in Gaborone, received various sums of money knowing, or suspecting, or having reasonable grounds to know, or suspecting, or having derived, or realised in whole, or in part, directly or indirectly from the commission of a confiscation offence, to wit, theft.
Seretse is the managing director of Kgori Capital, which has been administering the NPF since January 2016 after winning a tender, previously held by Stanlib. Kgori Capital says the case has nothing to do with the company as Seretse has been charged in his personal capacity. Apart from repaying retail oil companies when there is under recovery in the market, the NPF is also used to finance construction of oil storage facilities, which Botswana Oil and the Department of Energy (Now BERA) have been building around the country.
A company that is previously co-owned by Seretse, Basis Points Capital, is believed to have been engaged reportedly as transition advisors, for the projects to build oil storage facilities. Seretse’s co-accused in the money laundering case, Leburu was the managing director of Basis Points Capital after resigning from Standard Chartered Botswana in September this year, where she worked as head of financial markets. The third accused, Kerekang is a former director at the Department of Energy Affairs. He is now an executive director at BERA.
According to reliable sources, a risk manager who recently left BotswanaPost for Capital Bank noticed some suspicious transactions from a bunch of accounts where large sums of money would come into one business account and be transferred to another, and vice versa.
“All the money came from the NPF, from the fuel levy. She then went to her boss to make him aware of her suspicions, as it did not make sense what these companies were doing with the money from the NPF,” one source in the oil industry alleged.
The bank is said to have reported the matter to the Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA). It is alleged that the FIA contacted the energy parastatal for clarification, and one of the accused persons penned some unconvincing response. FIA then took the response to Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) asking them to investigate, which resulted in the arrests.
Another source said the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Service (DIS) wanted the Ministry of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security to assist them in developing small depots around the country at some strategic places. It is alleged that Kerekang then took the deal to Seretse claiming Seretse, through Basis Points Capital, was the transaction advisor for all the storage facilities projects.
“The ministry, through government engineers, quoted DIS and one of the accused put in an extra 20% commission. The total value including their 20% commission was P326 million. The money was paid from DIS into Basis Points Capital. “The money that got them into trouble is the commission that they were trying to extract and a woman was caught at the bank trying to send the money into an account in Israel. That was when FIA intervened.”