29 May 2017

Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) director general, Ms Rose Seretse says her institution investigates every corruption allegation without fear or favour.

Speaking before the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) recently, Ms Seretse said no one was beyond reproach and dismissed reports that said otherwise as baseless.

She indicated that since the establishment of DCEC, the landscape of corruption in Botswana has changed.

“We used to see a lot of bribery cases, and in recent years corruption has become highly complex and sophisticated,” she said, adding that the DCEC had seen a lot of land scam cases.

“In 2016 we investigated 26 land related cases and usually it balloons into other cases such as falsifying land deeds and manipulation of land allocation systems,” she said.

She noted that they had also seen cases of highly inflated prices in the procuring of goods and services, especially in government tendering.

Ms Seretse further said leaking of confidential procurement information had also been an issue the DCEC was grappling with.

“One finds that when tenders are at the evaluation stage some third parties are already privy to the information of who will be awarded the tender, and it is a problem we need to address,” said Ms Seretse.

She further said the corruption busting agency had seen an increase in the acquiring of illegal driving licences.

“We have noticed a trend of people going outside Botswana to acquire driving licences and they usually acquire them illegally. They then come back and go straight to the DRTS to change them and acquire Botswana driving licences,” she said, indicating that they had recommended that people who do this should go through the normal testing procedures, as someone acquiring a driver's licence for the first time.

In addition, Ms Seretse said  the whistle blowing legislation was now a law and that people who wish to report corruption practices could do so freely.

"The law protects whistle-blowers from being fired from work, helps us protect them with law enforcement officers if we feel that the person's life maybe in danger and also protects employees from victimization among other things,” she said.

She said they have also raised concern with regards to the Corruption and Economic Crime Act, especially sections that speak of conflict of interest.

 “We believe that conflict of interest is very narrow and should be broadened to include people such as nieces and nephews. Now it only involves one's immediate family and we feel it should also include one's siblings and their children,” she said.

The Member of Parliament for Gaborone Bonnington South inquired from Ms Seretse if her institution had received any information regarding corruption allegations at the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) and how far they were with investigations.

He also wanted to know if the DCEC found it difficult to investigate the spy agency and wanted to know if they had been any political interference.

Ms Seretse noted that they had received such information and had thoroughly investigated the allegations, and referred the matter to the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

“I cannot divulge the information because it is confidential and as for interference, we are comfortable that we can investigate as we deem fit without any interference,” she said.

Specially elected Member of Parliament, Ms Bogolo Kenewendo asked the director general to shed light on how the DCEC choose the corporations it audited, and to also touch on whether there had been investigations on both private and public tertiary institutions with regards to accreditation of courses.

Ms Seretse said for the DCEC to pick institutions it wanted to audit, they looked at their case management system to see how many reports they had received of those institutions.

“Basically if we see a lot of case reports of a particular institution, we feel that there is a need to establish and solve whatever it is. There are also ongoing investigations concerning some tertiary institutions on issues of accreditation,” she said. ENDS