- Accused of defrauding Gov’t by winning Tutume tender on false terms
- They are also accused of inflating Interim Payment Certificate
- They purported to have done work for China State Construction & Engineering Corporation
Inside the sprawling fraud indictment that prosecutors say turned a village infrastructure project into a conduit for forged letters, inflated invoices and quietly moved millions.
It began, prosecutors say, with a lie dressed in the language of credibility: references that gleamed with the endorsement of one of the world’s largest builders, a bank’s solemn promise to stand behind the money, and a citizen-owned company that looked, on paper, exactly like the kind of enterprise a young nation wants to reward.
None of it, according to a charge sheet lodged at the Regional Magistrate Court here, was true.
In a sprawling indictment that reads like a blueprint for how public money disappears, the Directorate of Public Prosecutions has accused seven people and three companies of hollowing out a government infrastructure project meant to lift the village of Tutume – and of walking away with more than a quarter of a billion pula. The headline figure is staggering even by the standards of grand graft: P272,378,310.96, drawn from the Central District Council and originally earmarked by the Government of Botswana under its Economic Stimulus Programme for the Tutume Infrastructure Project, Tender No. CDC/RDS/16/2016.
The accused have not been convicted of anything. The twelve counts laid out in the charge sheet are allegations, and each defendant is presumed innocent until a court decides otherwise. But the document itself is a dense, methodical narrative of alleged deceit, told in the dry cadence of statute and the hard arithmetic of money moved from one account to the next.
The pitch
At the centre of the case stand two businessmen and the companies they are said to direct. Johane Luther-Tine Thiite, 47, is named alongside Thiite Rubble Screeners (Pty) Ltd, the firm he is said to lead as managing director. Nicolas Zakhem, 65, appears beside Zac Construction (Pty) Ltd, the company prosecutors describe as his.
Between September 2017 and August 2020, the charge sheet alleges, the four – the two men and their two companies, “acting together and in concert” – set out to defraud the government by winning the Tutume tender on false terms. The alleged deception had three legs.
First, prosecutors say, the references submitted in support of the bid were forgeries, “false in both form and substance,” claiming experience the bidders had never earned. Chief among them was purported work for the China State Construction & Engineering Corporation; a marquee name that, according to the charge sheet, had never employed them for the jobs described.
Second, the bid leaned on a letter of intent from a bank promising a performance bond and an advance-payment guarantee – the financial backbone any serious contractor must show. That letter, prosecutors allege, was never authorised by Banc ABC, which “never intended to provide the bond or guarantee.”
Third, and perhaps most pointedly in a country that reserves certain contracts for its own citizens, the charge sheet alleges that Thiite Rubble Screeners was never the true beneficiary at all. It was, prosecutors contend, “merely fronting” for Zac Construction – a firm said to be ineligible to bid because it did not meet the citizen-ownership requirement spelled out in the Invitation to Tender.
On the strength of those alleged misrepresentations, the charge sheet says, the Central District Council awarded the contract and paid out the full P272.3 million.
The forged signature
If the bid was the architecture of the alleged scheme, Count Two describes its keystone; and names the man accused of fashioning it.
Kagiso Nthaga, 46, was, according to the charge sheet, an employee in the Corporate Investment section of Banc ABC. On or about 30 January 2017, prosecutors allege, he drafted and signed the false letter of intent promising the performance bond and advance-payment guarantee in favour of Thiite Rubble Screeners.
The method, as described, was audacious. Mr. Nthaga is accused of “fraudulently utilizing the identity and name” of a colleague, Gomolemo Tshelametsi – the employee actually authorised to issue such documents — and of forging that colleague’s signature, thereby persuading the Central District Council that the bank had genuinely pledged its backing.
The inflated certificate
By May 2018, the project was underway, and with it, prosecutors say, a second avenue of alleged theft opened: the payment pipeline itself.
Count Three accuses the two businessmen, their companies and a sixth defendant, Tumelo Johane Mbaiwa, 50 – described as the resident engineer on the project – of inflating Interim Payment Certificate No. 6. The arithmetic laid out in the charge sheet is precise. The actual payable amount, prosecutors say, was P8,733,442.66. The amount the government actually paid out was P14,009,666.20. The difference – P5,276,223.54 – represents, in the charge sheet’s words, the “actual financial prejudice” suffered by the Government of Botswana on that single certificate.
The envelopes
What gives the indictment its texture is the chain of alleged kickbacks that prosecutors say greased each decision – a ledger of favours rendered and paid for.
The resident engineer, Mr. Mbaiwa, is accused of corruptly accepting P30,000 as a reward for inflating that sixth payment certificate (Count Four). In the mirror-image charge, Mr. Zakhem and Zac Construction are accused of handing him that same P30,000 (Count Five).
The alleged payments reach further back, to the gatekeeping stage of the tender itself. Portia Tebogo Gilika, 54, named as a manager at Haas Consult RSA (Pty) Ltd – the consultancy engaged by the Central District Council to evaluate bids and oversee the project – is accused of accepting P100,000 on or about 13 September 2017 as a reward for favouring and recommending Thiite Rubble Screeners for the award (Count Six). Mr. Zakhem and Zac Construction face the corresponding charge of giving her that sum (Count Seven).
The consultancy itself does not escape. Haas Consult, prosecutors allege, accepted a further P250,000 on or about 23 October 2017 for having “favourably evaluated and recommended” Thiite Rubble Screeners (Count Eight) – with Mr. Thiite, his company and Mr. Zakhem accused of providing it (Count Nine). In total, the charge sheet describes P380,000 in alleged inducements flowing to the very people entrusted to guard the public interest.
Following the money
The final three counts trace where the proceeds allegedly went once the public coffers had been opened – the laundering, as prosecutors frame it, of money said to be the fruit of false pretences.
On or about 22 September 2017, the charge sheet alleges, P6 million was transferred to a Zac Construction account at First Capital Bank (Count Ten). The same day, prosecutors say, P3.74 million moved to an account held by a company called Khwee (Pty) Ltd at Stanbic Bank (Count Eleven). Four days later, on or about 26 September 2017, a further P1 million is said to have landed in a Zac Construction account (Count Twelve). Taken together, the three transactions account for P10.74 million that prosecutors contend was spirited through the banking system in the space of a single week.
What comes next
The charge sheet was signed at Gaborone by Mpolokeng Kgangyame, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, and stamped by the Clerk of Court’s civil registry on 24 September 2026. The counts span the Penal Code’s provisions on obtaining by false pretences, making documents without authority, cheating and corrupt practices, as well as the money-laundering provisions of the Proceeds and Instruments of Crime Act.
The defendants – Mr. Thiite, Mr. Zakhem, Mr. Nthaga, Mr. Mbaiwa, Ms. Gilika and the three companies – will have their day in court, where the allegations must be proved. For now, the charge sheet stands as the state’s unproven account of how a programme designed to pour concrete and create jobs in Tutume became, prosecutors say, a conduit for forged letters, inflated invoices and quietly moved millions.
Whatever the verdict, the figures alone have already made their point. A tender meant to build up a village sits at the heart of one of the largest alleged frauds the country’s courts have been asked to weigh.
DPP confirms
DPP spokesperson Oageletse Boapotswe confirmed to Weekend Post this week that the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) had recently charged two prominent individuals.
“It is true that the DPP has recently charged two prominent people,” Boapotswe said.
She explained that the prosecution could not disclose further details at this stage because the accused are scheduled to appear before the Broadhurst Magistrates’ Court on the 15th of this month.
Boapotswe said information relating to the charges would remain confidential until the accused are arraigned.
