For more than a decade he sat at the apex of the nation’s flagship citizen-empowerment lender, dispensing public money meant to build a generation of Batswana entrepreneurs. Now a cache of investigation dockets from the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime paints Thabo Thamane, the long-serving former chief executive of the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency, as a man at the centre of a sprawling web of alleged abuse, conflict of interest and misappropriated millions.
He was, by the Directorate’s own reckoning, one of the longest-serving chief executives the agency has ever known – a fixture who joined the Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) in 2003 and ascended to its top office in 2011, holding the reins for more than a decade. His mandate was unambiguous: to counsel the board on policy, execute its resolutions, and above all to discharge a fiduciary duty to the public purse.
Instead, according to a bundle of assessment files and a dedicated report compiled by the DCEC, Thabo Thamane presided over what investigators describe as a pattern of favouritism, procurement irregularity and the quiet steering of public funds toward the politically connected and the personally convenient.
The documents remain, for the most part, allegations. Several dockets are still open; others sit awaiting a prosecutor’s decision; a handful have been forwarded for closure. Nothing here has been tested in a court of law, and Thamane is entitled to the presumption of innocence. But read together, the files sketch an unflattering portrait of an institution that the Directorate bluntly characterises as having been “used as a laundering cover” by a cluster of politically exposed persons.
The cooking-oil contract and the repackaged truth
Among the most vivid of the allegations is a scheme involving a government tender worth some P26.8 million to supply pure sunflower cooking oil to clinics across the country. The tender carried a patriotic string: the oil had, by specification, to be produced and packaged inside Botswana.
Investigators allege it was nothing of the sort. A company linked to a politically prominent businessman-cum-legislator – a name the Directorate records but which this publication withholds – is said to have approached a major local food group for supply, which in turn sourced the product from a South African oil manufacturer. The contracted quantities, worth roughly 18.8 million pula abroad, allegedly re-entered the country only to be dressed up as home-grown: at a Francistown plant, the files claim, containers were repackaged and their stickers swapped to satisfy the “made in Botswana” clause.
Threaded through the arrangement was CEDA itself. The agency, investigators say, corruptly extended an 11-million-pula loan to build the very plant that was supposed to produce and bottle the oil. Thamane, the report alleges, acted jointly with the businessman and an associate to misappropriate the funds, writing a letter that attested land belonged to the pair and the agency – after which more money flowed and was, the Directorate contends, siphoned for personal benefit. The report notes that the chief executive and the businessman were listed as directors of the same holding company.
The docket has been referred to the Directorate of Public Prosecutions for mutual legal assistance from South Africa, Mauritius and Zambia. But investigators are already blunt: the evidence at hand, they write, is sufficient to pursue prosecution against Thabo Thamane on charges of corruption for abuse of office and conflict of interest.
The minister’s five loans
A second file turns to a powerful Cabinet figure – identified in the dockets but unnamed here – who, as the minister then responsible for appointing CEDA’s board, is alleged to have manipulated that board into approving a cascade of loans in defiance of the agency’s own credit policy. The minister allegedly collected five loans totalling more than 8.6 million pula even while earlier debts sat unpaid.
The modus operandi, as the Directorate describes it, was almost elegant in its cynicism: a drought year would be declared at Cabinet, loans would be slashed by seventy percent – and even the reduced balance would go unserviced. A defaulter by any ordinary measure, the borrower would nonetheless be issued fresh credit.
Thamane’s alleged contribution was procedural but telling. Investigators say he inserted conditions into the loan agreement that routed money directly into the borrower’s personal bank account, rather than to suppliers as the agency’s norms demanded. “The CEO had discretionary powers that he abused,” the file states, before concluding that available evidence proves a prima facie case against Thamane for charges of corruption for abuse of office.
A building, a residence and an undeclared interest
Perhaps the allegation the Directorate believes Thamane himself fears most concerns bricks and mortar. Intelligence, the report notes pointedly, “has picked that he considers the case involving the CEDA office more damaging against him.”
Here the claim is that Thamane was a silent partner in the construction firm that owns the very building housing CEDA’s offices – and that he was eager to relocate the agency into premises in which he held a hidden stake, without ever declaring that interest. Loans alleged to total some P77.7 million were, the file claims, channelled to that company and an associated tiling firm in breach of the agency’s financial policies.
The property allegations do not end there. The chief executive’s own residence, investigators say, was over-valued at 11 million pula through the connivance of a valuation company and the CEO, after which CEDA bore “unnecessary expenses” refurbishing it. The firm that allegedly sold the house to the agency is said to be the same one that built its new offices. On this file the Directorate contemplates not only charges of abuse and conflict of interest, but a lifestyle audit and the eventual confiscation of assets under proceeds-of-crime legislation.
Pension funds, in-laws and ghost companies
The remaining files widen the lens.
In one, Thamane is alleged to have repaid a patronage debt: having been recommended for the CEO post by a predecessor who later moved into insurance broking, he is said to have funnelled business to a services company handling the 90-million-pula CEDA staff pension fund – a company CEDA then additionally funded to the tune of 2.5 million pula while the larger sum remained uncleared, a practice the agency does not permit.
In another, the chief executive’s own father-in-law surfaces as a delinquent borrower – a man with no cattle on his farm to service his debt, owing CEDA more than half a million pula, who was nonetheless allegedly shielded from foreclosure on instructions traced to Thamane and his office, paying a token 2,500 pula a month against an obligation of nearly 131,000.
An older case alleges collusion with a magazine publisher to rig a tender for a young-farmers publication, complete with “ghost companies” created to crowd out a cheaper, legitimate bidder. Another describes a company that allegedly harvested loans totalling more than 8.7 million pula “under the influence” of the chief executive, with branch managers given strict instructions to execute the transactions. A further file revisits a hospital-zoned plot allegedly re-allocated under suspicious circumstances to a company owned by Thamane for a hotel or lodge, through dealings with unnamed city-council employees. And in a final strand, investigators are probing the appointment of an attorney to CEDA’s board who was simultaneously awarded legal tenders by the agency.
‘An exercise in futility’
The Directorate’s conclusion is unsparing. Thamane, it argues, “for the longest time was protected by those who benefited from him being the CEO.” It frames CEDA as an instrument bent to the purposes of politically exposed persons, and anticipates the defence to come – that the chief executive was “politically pressurised.”
Investigators press for all loans written off since his 2011 appointment to be examined, and make a pointed observation about the limits of probing a sitting custodian of information: “an investigation of a person whilst still holding office,” the report notes, “is an exercise in futility.” The real reckoning, it suggests, lies in compelling him to account for his wealth. “He would want to protect his wealth,” the Directorate writes, “and that is the point of departure.”
The allegations summarised above are drawn from assessment files and investigation reports compiled by the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime. They have not been tested in court, and no finding of guilt has been made against any person named or referenced. All individuals are entitled to the presumption of innocence. editorial caution; only Mr Thabo Thamane, the former CEDA chief executive, is identified, at the client’s instruction.
