A Khama drama in Botswana
Forensic report rubbishes money laundering claims against ex-president
● In 2009, the director-general of Botswana’s intelligence service, Isaac Kgosi, e-mailed German businessman Claus Colling to expect a transfer of $100m. Both used @protonmail addresses, according to court evidence from an investigator at Botswana’s anti-corruption agency, Jako Hubona.
Hubona said the money originated from accounts opened at Botswana’s reserve bank, the Bank of Botswana, by then president Ian Khama. Extracts from the e-mails are attached to Hubona’s affidavit, filed in the Botswana high court.
But there is a problem: Protonmail only came into existence as an e-mail platform in 2013. “The e-mail exchanges could not have happened as alleged, and this detail continues a striking pattern of fabrication that characterises the affidavit,” says a report this week that trashes Hubona’s affidavit.
Hubona’s affidavit was filed in a money laundering case that, if it gets off the ground, could pull in Khama and prominent SA businesswoman Bridgette Motsepe.
The affidavit was filed in opposition to the bail application of Welheminah Mphoeng Maswabi, who is described in the report as a former Botswana intelligence officer, and by Hubona as Kgosi’s girlfriend. He describes Kgosi as Khama’s “close associate”.
The report, by UK firms Omnia Strategy LLP and Alaco Limited, says: “The state’s case appears to be that President Khama and … Motsepe intended to use these funds to orchestrate political unrest and fund opposition groups against the current president of Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi.”
The bail application was heard days after an election that returned Botswana Democratic Party leader Masisi — once Khama’s protégé — to power. The two later fell out and Khama threw his weight behind the opposition Botswana Patriotic Front.
Motsepe was first linked to the allegations when Botswana’s Sunday Standard reported last year that she was involved in an attempt to unseat Masisi. Hubona’s affidavit then officially made the claim.
The use of apparently fake e-mail addresses was not the only problem with Hubona’s affidavit, says the report. In “a matter of weeks”, Omnia and Alaco “unravelled … inconsistencies, errors and fabrications” and concluded that “in this case at least, the integrity of Botswana’s prosecutorial system has failed”.
The report was commissioned by and paid for by Motsepe, who Hubona said was a signatory on a number of bank accounts and the owner of companies meant to be recipients of a large chunk of the money that was moved out of the Bank of Botswana.
However on Thursday, former SA prosecutor Gerrie Nel said that a report commissioned and paid for by the very person it was investigating was an “unendorsed, unofficial, untested investigation”.
Nel, who now heads AfriForum’s private prosecutions unit, said he had been briefed to assist Botswana, whose request for legal assistance from SA in this case had gone unanswered since September.
His unit has now gone to court for an order forcing SA to respond to Botswana’s request.
Nel said he would not comment on the merits of the investigation but said he had been privy to the contents of the request for mutual assistance. “I will say that the request at least warrants a response from the SA authorities,” he said.
The total that was alleged to have been taken out of the Bank of Botswana was $10.1bn. What happened to most of it is unclear, says the report. The arithmetic of the money flows is one of the many elements that don’t add up, but a large chunk is alleged by Hubona to have ended up in SA in bank accounts that Motsepe had signing powers to, via a series of intermediate companies and payments across the globe. But, says the report, the companies and bank accounts that the money was routed through are a web of fabrications.
For example, the first tranche of the alleged international fund flows in 2009 was supposed to have gone from the Bank of Botswana to “Odyssey Energy LLC” at HSBC in Hong Kong. But this was “impossible” because Odyssey Energy did not exist as a corporate entity until 2013.
The SA companies Blue Flies Inc and Fire Flies Inc, supposedly owned by Motsepe, did not even exist, says the report. Nor did 15 of the 17 bank accounts cited in the affidavit as being recipients of money.
The SA Reserve Bank said it had no record of any cross-border flow of funds into or out of SA as referred to in Hubona’s affidavit, according to the report. Most tellingly, says the report, the governor of the Bank of Botswana — from which the money was supposedly taken — reportedly told MPs that no funds were transferred out of the bank as alleged in the affidavit and that the Bank of Botswana had never held that amount of money in its account in the first place.
Though Omnia was careful to confine itself to this particular case when it said Botswana’s prosecution service was compromised, Khama was more direct on 702 on Thursday, accusing Masisi of using law enforcement agencies to settle political scores.
Maswabi is, according to Hubona’s affidavit, charged with possession of unexplained property and financing terrorism. Her case was postponed on Monday for further investigation.
The trial is yet to get properly under way, with Nel hinting that it was the failure of SA authorities to respond to the request for mutual assistance that delayed matters.
However, department of justice spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said the department had been liaising with the Botswana government on the request.
“We will continue to engage the government of Botswana through diplomatic channels [as] we continue to do in numerous other cases. This case will not be an exception.”
We will continue to engage the government of Botswana
Chrispin Phiri
Justice department spokesperson