Africa-Press – Botswana. While the judgement by Justice Chris Gabanagae at the Gaborone High Court found a former Permanent Secretary to the President, Carter Morupisi, guilty, there was also an odd aspect of this case.
As the Chairperson of the Botswana Public Officers Pension Fund Board of Trustees, Morupisi (who was then the Director of Directorate of Public Service Management) worked hand in hand with then CEO, Lesedi Moakofhi. The state’s case was that Morupisi corruptly signed a contract to authorise Capital Management Botswana to manage a portion (P500 million) of the Fund’s money. This happened without the authority of the Board – which was absolutely necessary. The Court determined that thereafter, CMB directors returned the favour by buying a company owned by Morupisi’s wife a luxury four-wheel drive vehicle. While explicitly pronouncing Morupisi’s actions to have been criminal, Gabanagae’s judgement merely raised serious ethical questions about Moakofhi’s role in administrative action that facilitated such criminality.
As it turns out, however, Moakofi was also being investigated and the end result is a criminal case of her own that just got started this month. So what did she do?
The CMB saga began at around the same time that the manual workers union was waging concerted legal campaign through the Collins Chilisa Consultants, a Gaborone law firm, to get representation on the BPOPF Board. Thus it was that Mboki Chilisa, a partner at the firm, secured a court order from Justice Tshepo Motswagole on behalf of the union. In terms of such order, activities of the BPOPF Board were suspended until the union was represented at its meetings. However, BPOPF didn’t comply with the order, instead launching its own (urgent) application to have Motswagole’s order overturned. The parties would later make an out-of-court settlement and while waiting for BPOPF to make good on its undertaking to include manual representatives in its Board, Chilisa got wind that “some business of the Board was being executed.” He promptly shot off a complaint letter, reminding BPOPF that it had yet to comply with Motswagole’s court order. This letter was copied to Morupisi in his position as Board Chairperson.
The business in question was the award of a lucrative tender to CMB – which had been concluded without the representation of a manual workers union in the Board, which representation Motswagole had ordered. When the matter blew up, Chilisa would give evidence as a state witness and he told the court that “Ms. Lesedi Moakofhi did nothing to revoke the contract styled en commandante agreement they signed awarding CMB mandate to manage BPOPF private equity to investment funds.”
In Moakofhi’s management team was Moemedi Malinda, who as Investment Portfolio Director, was responsible for the actual implementation of Board decisions. Malinda told the court that on the very day (November 11, 2014) that the Board was not operational (which meant that, for him, there was no decision to implement), “the then Acting CEO, Ms. Lesedi Moakofhi, organised the signing ceremony of the en commandante agreement.” Present at the ceremony were Morupisi, Malinda, Moakofhi herself, Musa Nleya, the Board Secretary and Legal Services Manager as well as two CMB directors, Rhys Carr and Timothy Marsland.
Nleya would himself testify during the trial, telling the court that Morupisi attended (and would thus have chaired) the meeting where CMB was awarded the tender in question. He critically added that this happened when activities of the Board had been suspended in terms of a court order issued by Motswagole.
Nleya’s professional opinion mattered the most at this critical juncture for the simple reason that he was the Legal Services Manager and the Board was wading into an issue that had legal implications. In his testimony, Nleya said that he advised Moakofhi against the signing of the contract. The judgement summarises his testimony as saying that “he indicated that the Acting CEO said that she did not want to be accused of not implementing Board resolutions like him.” As Malinda, before him Nleya told the court that Morupisi attended the signing ceremony.
In his own testimony, Morupisi denied that a signing ceremony was held and that he attended it. His testimony was that the contract was delivered to the Office of the President where he was attending a performance review exercise for the Ministry of Minerals, that was conducted by then President Ian Khama in the Cabinet Boardroom. Gabanagae determined this explanation to be a clear “afterthought meant to mislead the court.” Morupisi also said that he subjected himself to Nleya’s professional guidance every step of the way.
It was Moakofhi who wrote CMB to notify its directors of the Board’s decision to give their company a conditional offer pending successful completion of the legal agreement. The conditions were that CMB should commit to investing 1 percent of the fund size and the second was that both parties should successfully negotiate and sign the general/limited partner agreement and any other agreement documents from BPOPF.
Justice Gabanagae found that Morupisi and Moakofhi “deliberately defied” the court order issued by Justice Motswagole. In making reference to Nleya, the judge said that “he advised the then Acting CEO Ms. Lesedi Moakofhi against signing the contract” whilst the business of the Board was thus suspended.
“Furthermore, the emails that the then Acting CEO Ms. Lesedi Moakofhi sent to members whose membership was not affected by the court order, including [Morupisi] clearly show that all the parties concerned knew that the Board’s business was still in suspension,” the judgement says.
The BPOPF intrigue is more extensive than the court case and started around 2013 when the founding BPOPF CEO, Ephraim Letebele, who built the Fund from scratch, was pushed out and replaced, in an acting capacity, by Moakofi – who had been the Public Relations Manager. At the time, the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees was Rapula Okaile and there was public reporting that the ubiquitous Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) wanted to install Okaile himself as CEO. When the alleged plan drew bad press, Plan B took the form of concocting another, ultimately failed plan to appoint a substantive CEO who held qualifications lower than those a pricey consultancy had recommended.
In 2007, a human resources consultancy called EOH Consulting drew up the CEO job profile which specified that the right person must have a degree in commerce, economics or finance plus membership of an internationally recognised institution of professional accountants like ACCA, CIMA and CIS. In terms of relevant experience, the CEO had to have 10 years pensions experience. With regard to the category of “superior operating skills and financial acumen”, the right candidate is supposed to have technical/professional expertise in pension administration and investment management and business awareness of current regulatory practices and policies in the pensions’ area.
However, in the internal vacancy advertisment for the CEO position, the bar had been set lower than what EOH Consulting (which was reportedly paid around P2 million pula to develop the job profiles) recommended. This advert said that candidates must have the said type of degrees “or relevant discipline, and/or an internationally recognised professional qualification of a recognised institution.” A source says that “relevant discipline” broadens the field to such extent that candidates with little knowledge of finance would qualify. EOH was also specific about the right person being a member of an internationally recognised institution of professional accountants like ACCA, CIMA and CIS. Conversely, the internal ad was not as precise about the professional qualification. A BPOPF source said that the dumbing down of qualifications would have enabled Moakofi, whose professional background is in marketing, to qualify for the CEO position.
Moakofhi has since left BPOPF and is now Managing Director of Gaborone Container Terminal (“Gabcon”), a Botswana Railways subsidiary. Her appointment to the latter position was itself clouded in controversy because she was interviewed for the job by fellow members of the BR Board of Directors. The Board, which had earlier rejected the three candidates upon determination that they had “developmental needs”, ended up appointing Moakofhi whom the psychometric assessment showed also had developmental needs. She subsequently resigned her Board position to take up the Gabcon job.
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