A hefty document, the partnership agreement dated November 11, 2014 and signed by the Botswana Public Officers Pension Fund (BPOPF) and asset management firm, Capital Management Botswana (CMB), has landed Carter Morupisi, in turbulent times. The former PSP is a storied civil servant once hailed as an anti-corruption hero for allegedly snubbing a P250, 000 bribery attempt by Chinese nationals in 2011. Later today, Morupisi will find out what sentence the Court of Appeal has decided he should face after confirming his conviction for three counts of corruption and money laundering. The November 11, 2014 contract, apparently innocuous and par for the course for a pension fund and its chosen asset manager, has returned to haunt a man who as PSP was the top most civil servant from 2014-2020. It was in that role that Morupisi manoeuvred to award a P500 million private equity mandate from the BPOPF to CMB. The contract would later descend into a web of illicit transactions and dealings, crossing over borders, with millions of pensioners’ pulas being misdirected, mis-invested and diverted. Even today, liquidators are still scrambling to recover funds that were irregularly invested. In a condemnatory 67-page judgment recently, the Court of Appeal found that Morupisi, with the assistance of carefully placed allies, connived to award CMB the P500 million contract, in return for a kickback being a brand-new Land Cruiser valued at over R630,000. In an even more damning finding, the CoA ruled that Morupisi had set about to cover his tracks with an elaborate ruse designed to make it appear that he had legitimately acquired the vehicle.
The court found that Morupisi, then BPOPF Board chair, ignored the absence of a board resolution and rushed to award the contract to CMB, where allies had been strategically placed beforehand. “What triggered the rushed signing of the contract when a final resolution had not been made by the board on the contract involving millions of public officers’ pension funds? “The appellant (Morupisi) did not shed light on this matter. “An inescapable inference, in the circumstances, is that the rushed signing was a sine qua non (necessary condition) for the anticipated receipt of a valuable consideration. “Evidently, the subsequent receipt of the Land Cruiser could in the circumstances only be a quid pro quo for the appellant’s signing of the contract to facilitate a diversion of pension funds...,” ruled the CoA. The CoA was originally scheduled to hand down Morupisi’s sentence last week, but the former PSP’s new lawyers requested and were granted an opportunity to make more arguments in favour of their client.
