Africa-Press – Lesotho. A FORMER top government official has told a parliamentary committee that heads should roll and police should arrest whoever signed the controversial Frazer solar deal which has drawn the attention of the Prime Minister.
Moahloli Mphaka, a former government secretary, said this as members of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) roasted him over the deal this week.
The parliamentary committee members wanted to know the role he played in the deal with the Germany company which is now demanding R850 million from Lesotho.
Frazer signed an agreement in 2018 with Lesotho to provide as many as 40 000 solar water-heating systems, 20 megawatts of solar photovoltaic capacity, 1 million LED lights and 350 000 solar lanterns.
In June, Prime Minister Moeketsi Majoro issued a statement saying he had tasked the Attorney General to fight the firm’s demands. This was after news that a High Court in South Africa had confirmed a default arbitral award giving the company power to attach Lesotho’s assets to recover the money it is seeking from Lesotho.
The Prime Minister said the Attorney General has engaged a South African law firm to challenge the move and apply for a stay of execution. This week, Mphaka told PAC members that the police should also go after Robert Frazer, the Frazer Solar Company CEO, for defrauding Lesotho.
“No country can take that big decision without cabinet approval,” Mphaka said.
“This means such a decision taken unilaterally is a fraud committed by the two parties who tangled together,” he said, adding that “whoever signed with Frazer committed fraud”.
“The Lesotho police must be searching for Frazer as he tried to commit fraud. He tried to scam the government,” he said.
Mphaka denied that he received correspondence from Frazer Solar or its lawyers and sat on it without passing it to the Attorney General. “Frazer knows that he never came to the Government Secretary with the issue.
The case is wrong, null and void,” he said. He said it does not make sense that he could receive court papers on behalf of the government and fail to take them to the Attorney General, the government’s lawyer.
He said he only knew about the Frazer court issue from newspaper reports as cabinet had never approved the deal. He said this is the evidence he has given to the Johannesburg High Court, where the government has applied for rescission of the judgment in favour of Frazer Solar.
He said Frazer must instead “go and sue the people he entered into the agreement with instead of the Lesotho government”. Mphaka said it is surprising that the agreement was purportedly entered into between Frazer Solar and the Office of the Prime Minister, which did not have powers to do so.
Also, he said, it was the Finance Minister who was supposed to entertain such transactions but there is no evidence that he was involved. He also said the King’s name should not have been dragged into the scandalous contract.
“Big agreements such as this one are always celebrated and the television is called to witness a toast, but that never happened with this one,” he said, insisting that it is a scam.
He said “the biggest anomaly” was the solar issue being handled by the Office of the Prime Minister. “This also looks like a loan and the only person who can source funds for the government is the Finance Minister,” he said.
He said the agreement also should have involved the Ministries of Energy and the initiating stakeholder, the Ministry of Development Planning and Finance.
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