AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) has uncovered massive loans repayment irregularities perpetrated by street lenders, who have been charging interest rates ranging from 300 to over 1,000 percent interests to loan seekers, mainly retired public servants.
Speaking in Dar es Salaam, PCCB Director General, Brigadier General John Mbungo, revealed that the main victims of this group’s presence were retired persons, especially teachers.
He gave an example of one pensioner, who had borrowed a sum of 900,000/- and was to repay 1,260,000 / – at 40 percent interest, which is still high.
The same individual was later required to pay 12,500,000 / -, payments that equal 1,388 percent interest.
The director general further explained hat another pensioner borrowed 5m/ – so that he could repay 7m/ – which is equivalent to 40 per cent, but instead paid 20m/ -, which is equivalent to 300 per cent interest.
After discovering the dirty game, PCCB took some measures to reclaim the lost money and vowed to continue to fight street lenders who have been exploiting public service retirees.
“In Mara Region alone, until April 2020, we have already successfully reclaimed the money lost to lenders amounting to a total sum of 289m/- plus one widow’s house worth 40m/-. In general, through this operation, the PCCB has succeeded in recovering large sums of money,” he said.
Brigadier general Mbungo further explained that the PCCB’s intervention on the matter has helped in restoring the happiness and life to the retired teachers, who had lost hopes of life.
Other regions (the amount in brackets recovered) are Tabora in Kaliua District (41,200,000/-).
The rest are Katavi (29m/-), Mwanza (17,440,000/-), Kagera (10m/-), Njombe (5m/-) and Rukwa where a street lender was arrested and found in possession of 85 bank cards.
Such mitigating means are part of strategies the bureau is set to undertake for the year 2020/2021.
He also gave explanations on investigations into cooperative unions’ audit reports for 2018/2019 whose information was given by Agriculture Minister Japhet Hasunga on November 26, 2019 and given to the PCCB to investigate fraudulent and corrupt practices on financial expenditure of cooperative unions.
According to a summary report presented to the PCCB, he said the total amount of money suspected to have fraud and corruption indicators was 124,053,250,874/-.
According to him, the investigation into the allegation were being conducted in phases, whereby the first phase was reported on January 22, 2020 and the second phase reported on March 14, 2020.
The director general pointed out that as PCCB completed the second phase of the investigation on March 14, 2020, the amount of money investigated reached 66,255,488,545/73, the amount of money already saved was 8,898,661,156/88 and they were continuing investigating 57,356,827,388/85.
“Through this audience, we continue to call on all cooperative union members, including union leaders and traders, who bought crops of farmers or anyone with funds for cooperative unions to return the funds immediately,” he appealed.
