Handing down judgment on Thursday in the long running case against Phiri by the DCEC, who froze his various accounts at Stanbic with P25 million worth of foreign currency last year suspecting money laundering, High Court judge justice Michael Leburu said there was nothing suspicious at all about the frozen accounts, saying evidence from Forex World Pty Ltd, in South Africa, which disbursed the foreign currencies to Phiri, absolved Phiri from any suspected criminal activity. All the accounts were unfrozen by order of the court on Thursday last week, giving Phiri and Khato Civils Botswana access to the remainder of the P15 million in the various bank accounts at Stanbic.
Forex World CEO, Shmulik Weltsman, had furnished the court with evidence that Khato Civils were in the list of its clients with allocations of R20 million per year in foreign currency for purposes of business trips. In that list of the facility known as the Omnibus facility, two of Phiri’ companies, South Zambezi Engineering, and Khato Civils, both headquartered in Johannesburg, had been allotted a total R40 million a year in omnibus facility.
