"Tycoon" charged with lying to police

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer | Tuesday April 20, 2010 00:00

Central Police Station superintendent, Kevin Mookodi says, the duo was served, over the weekend, with the charge of giving false information to public servants. In a strange twist of events Senki Sesinyi, aka Tycoon, the man who recently laid torture and theft charges against the DIS, decided on Friday to withdraw both charges against the DIS.

Police official Mookodi said; ' We have opened a charge against them for giving false information to a public officer; we started the process on Friday but we managed to locate the men over the weekend', he said.

' We found it unfathomable that after claiming that their P56 000 disappeared, the same people come back and claimed that they are dropping the charges', the police official said.  The police also say the man who withdrew the charges is not the same man who laid them, but said the two men were together when they laid the charges in the first place. But talking in a phone interview, Tycoon, who has confessed that he owns many top of the range cars, and a lodge in the city, claimed he withdrew the charges after consulting his lawyer on Friday.

Pressed to say if the withdrawal of the charges might not be perceived as indication that he might have lied about the disappearance of the P56, 000, Sesinyi claimed losing P56, 000 is nothing to him. 'I make a lot of money. I made that P56 000 in three hours; I will make more money; in any case I knew that the DIS would not admit they stole the money. It was going to be a waste of time. It was always going to be my word against theirs because there were no witnesses at the scene', claimed Sesinyi on Friday. The man, who said he earns his wealth as an auctioneer, also told Mmegi that he decided to withdraw the charges because of a high profile court case he has with the State at the High Court. He did not elaborate about the said high profile court case.

'When I went to the DIS on Thursday last week I wanted to show them that I earned that money legitimately. I went there with proof. I was not so much hurt by the loss of the money (P56, 000), but I was flabbergasted by the DIS officers' impunity and arrogance', he claimed. 'I even told them that if they wanted more I could give them more', he said boasting.

Sesinyi denied he was under pressure to withdraw the case; 'When I wrote another letter withdrawing the charges I explained that they can go and build a house with that money, I do not care. I also withdrew torture charges saying that I will take the tortured person to the hospital at my expense (sic)'.

Sesinyi claimed his P56, 000, stashed in the boot of the car in a bag disappeared when the DIS ransacked his BMW car at the DIS premises last Wednesday evening.  The DIS agents abducted the driver of the BMW at Maruapula traffic lights on Wednesday evening and drove him handcuffed to their offices at the Old Radio Botswana studios.

However the in 21-year-old mechanical engineering student at the Faculty of Engineering and Technology (FET) Elias Ramogerika, said in a published interview in the Friday issue of Mmegi, that he was not physically tortured after he was taken upstairs, but that they took photos of him from all sides, and fiddled with his cell phone. He said he was asked many questions about Sesinyi's business operations and where he (Elias) got the fancy car he was driving. Approached for comment Sesinyi's lawyer Steven Raurau on Friday said his client maintains he lost his money. 'He maintains the boy was tortured and he lost the money but he decided that even if he took the matter further it was going to drain his efforts, not that he is changing the story. He does not feel like pursuing the matter; he is the person who originally felt aggrieved, it is the very same person who feels otherwise; he came to me and said he is no longer interested in the matter; I am subject to what the client tells me', said Raurau in a phone interview from Gantsi.