Investigate Kweneng District Council Ponzi scheme scandal

 An interesting report about the position of the law in relation to Ponzi schemes in our country has just aired on Botswana Television (Btv), facilitated by an official from First National Bank Botswana. I first became aware of Ponzi schemes through reading educative newspaper expose’s by such personalities as, forgive me if I’m wrong, Richard Harriman. From what I learnt in newspapers, I was able to follow how easily Batswana lost their money to such fraudsters. Never did it occur to me that I would one day read about how our taxes were splashed by a Government Department into a Ponzi scheme. The case I am referring to is the well documented case of how the local Government in the Kweneng District invested, and lost, millions of tax payers’ money into a Ponzi scheme run by some shady company whose name I no longer remember.

What I still remember is that there were allegations flying thick and fast to the effect that the  Kweneng District Council (KDC) Chairman at the time was a shareholder in the Company involved. The KDC Chairman vigorously denied such allegations, explaining that when the Council money, i.e. our taxes, was invested in the Ponzi scheme, he had already divested from the Company. It nonetheless left a very sour taste in the mouths of many people, because he was still Council chairman anyway. Here was the top then-ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) politician in the district apparently washing his hands of any blame in the reckless investing of Government money in a Ponzi scheme. Surely the Council officials who actually signed for the money to be invested were no more than the Council Secretariat, working under his Council’s “political” leadership. Today’s report on Btv makes it clear that Ponzi schemes are illegal in Botswana. Our taxes were siphoned down the drain through a Ponzi scheme.

If ever there was a case of corporate corruption that needs investigating with the full might of the law, this is it. And so I call upon the new UDC Government to get to the bottom of this scandalous waste of national resources. The case of the Kweneng District’s investing of our taxes in a Ponzi scheme is only one of the many reasons why the former governing party needs to be made accountable for fifty eight (58) years of wasted developmental opportunity. From day one after independence the BDP has been busy consolidating their tribally based hegemony to the detriment of properly planned national development. I will have a lot more to write about how our country needs to be de-tribalized, starting with changing its name from Botswana to a non-tribal name. 


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