Botswana Is Ideal For Criminal Syndicates

PATRICIA MAGANU
Staff Writer | Monday August 6, 2007 00:00

The seminar, which was sponsored by the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) at Francistown's Tati River Lodge, also heard that Botswana's political stability and relative economic success could be the country's Achilles' heel.

'The attractiveness and vulnerability of Botswana stems from her economic and political stability and the rigorous attempts to woo direct foreign investment,' Tymon Katlholo, the Director of DCEC, told the seminar.

 
'Serious crime is taking a devastating toll on our economy. News of heists involving millions of pula, hijackings and theft of luxury vehicles perpetrated by criminal syndicates across borders is currently making headlines.' 
To illustrate his point, Katlholo used the case - currently before the courts - of two Zimbabweans found with half-a-million pula. The state alleges that the money, which is suspected of being proceeds of crime, was never declared to customs at the point of entry.

'A country's entire financial system can be placed at risk by money laundering through loss of integrity and investor confidence,' he said.
An investigator with DCEC, Lesley Senwelo, told seminar participants that between January 2005 and July 2006, the DCEC had recorded 201 suspected cases of money laundering involving P63 million pula - five hundred thousand in South African rands and one-and-a-half million in US dollars.

'We have 207 under investigations; 22 investigations completed, three submitted to the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and four pending before court,' Senwelo said.
It also emerged that Botswana is at high risk because there are institutions that handle cash but are not regulated by the central bank. Goememang Baatlholeng of Bank of Botswana's (BoB) supervising unit said although such companies are required to report large sums of money, multinationals like Western Union are not regulated by BoB.

Jackson Madzima, a researcher with Cape Town-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS) said while there were debates regarding the vibrancy of the Botswana economy, 'for money launderers, Botswana could just be the place to do business.'
Mmadzima said because Botswana had never had a civil war or any major political upheaval, it was an ideal home for criminal syndicates.

 
Meanwhile, the DCEC has published a booklet on money laundering. In it, the anti-corruption body cites the liberalisation of exchange controls in the 1990s as having been an unwitting invitation to criminal syndicates.

The relaxation of exchange controls was meant to attract more direct foreign investment. However, 'as these activities increased, so did the opportunities for unscrupulous persons to make fortunes by illicit means such as money laundering,' the booklet says.