Tati East Member of Parliament (MP) Samson Moyo Guma said he would be back in the country next week. Moyo fled the country after he said he was tipped off about an alleged plot to assassinate him.
Moyo has been on the run since March this year and is expected to attend the 12th session of Parliament, which commenced on Wednesday.
“I am still the MP for Tati East constituency and I will be back to speak for my constituents.
One thing that I can tell you is that I will be attending this last session of Parliament. I will be back very soon, it could be next week. My constituents need me and I have to come and tell them what happened,” Moyo said.
In an interview with Mmegi, Moyo said he has not yet made any decision on which party to join when he returns. He continued: “For now I haven’t decided on the party I will join but I will announce or make a decision after talking to my constituents”.
Moyo got expelled from Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) after he failed to attend a party disciplinary hearing. This was after they were accused of attending an ‘illegal’ meeting in Serowe late February.
The then BDP presidential hopeful, Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi had called the meeting as part of her campaign strategy.
Recently, Moyo said he had informed the Speaker of the National Assembly about the alleged assassination threats. He claimed that a mole in the Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) service informed him of the elaborate plan. Moyo said he would face his problems when he is back in the country. Recently, the troubled Moyo placed his company United Refineries Botswana Holdings (URB), a cooking oil manufacturing plant in the outskirts of Francistown, under provisional judicial management.
This was after reports that Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS) was after his scalp for his alleged failure to pay tax. In a previous interview, DIS director general Peter Magosi revealed that Moyo has to account for about P30 million that he took from different banks.“His cooking oil manufacturing project is not working and we want to know where the money is. BURS also got a search warrant against him and wants to repossess some of his goods,” Magosi said.
An angry Magosi said Moyo should stop misleading the nation that there was a plot to assassinate him when he knew the truth. “If we wanted to arrest him, we could have long done that. He is not even picking up our calls. He must come back home. No one is going to stop us from fighting corruption.”
It has been reported that URB was awarded a P29m tender by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development and did not pay tax, a move that put him on a collision coarse with the BURS.
It is also alleged that the company might have misspent about P63m it got from the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA), Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) and First National Bank Botswana (FNBB). In total, it is believed that Moyo owes BURS an excess of P20m through his numerous companies.
Besides Moyo, Prince Maele was also slapped with a 12-month suspension after he expressed his unequivocal support for former president Ian Khama.
Maele made the declaration during a Kgotla meeting hosted by Khama at Moremi Kgotla early this year. Another MP, who was also suspended for six months from the BDP, is Biggie Butale who is now convener for the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF), a new political movement.
