Botswana’s ex-president rejects claims of $10bn theft
Scandal intensifies as Ian Khama says new administration fabricated claims to smear him
Botswana’s former president has accused his successor’s government of using stolen bank records from around the world to fabricate claims that he looted billions of dollars from the southern African nation’s central bank, in a case that has cast a shadow on one of Africa’s most stable democracies.
Ian Khama said allegations by prosecutors that he stole $10bn from the world’s second-biggest diamond producer had been “straightforward politically motivated” by President Mokgweetsi Masisi.
Prosecutors implicated Mr Khama and Bridgette Motsepe, a South African businesswoman, in the alleged financing of political unrest against Mr Masisi in a money laundering case brought last year against a former intelligence official, codenamed “Butterfly”. Neither has been charged.
A forensic report by the law firm of Cherie Blair — commissioned by Ms Motsepe, who is the sister in law of South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa — found that the claims were false and used illicitly-obtained data to appear real. There was a “striking pattern of fabrication”, said the report by Omnia, Mrs Blair’s firm.
“These people have used stolen data to fabricate this affidavit,” Mr Khama said in an interview with the FT. The case showed how Mr Masisi “has proven to be extremely intolerant of opponents” and that law enforcement was being used to target political foes, he said.
The saga has already clouded Botswana’s otherwise strong reputation on the continent for the health of its democracy and rule of law, and has its roots in the estrangement of Mr Khama and Mr Masisi, his former deputy who took over when Mr Khama stepped down in 2018.
But they rapidly fell out, to the point of Mr Khama departing the Botswana Democratic Party that his father, the country’s first post-independence president, founded and that has held power for decades.
Ahead of elections last year Mr Khama became the patron of a breakaway group that worked with the main opposition political alliance Umbrella for Democratic Change. The ruling party still secured more than double the seats of the UDC.
The case implicating Mr Khama and Ms Motsepe was launched within days of the vote. The state said Mr Khama ordered Botswana’s central bank to set up bank accounts “sourced from our country’s revenue on foreign investments” and channelled the funds abroad including to Ms Motsepe, in order to ultimately finance unrest at home.
But the investigation by Mrs Blair’s firm indicated that alleged international transfers were fictitious, appearing to show a series of basic errors and South Africa’s central bank denying knowledge of key funds.
According to Omnia’s investigation, some accounts at HSBC, Citibank and Deutsche Bank were real, but the owners said that the alleged transfers to them from Botswana did not take place, and their details appeared to have been stolen.
“We know these things do go on, but we don’t expect them to go on in Botswana . . . I hope that Botswana has sufficient adherence to the rule of law that the prosecutors will withdraw their case,” Mrs Blair told the FT. Mr Khama plans to bring perjury and defamation cases against the state.
Even without the issue of the apparently stolen data and the other discrepancies identified in the report, the alleged theft of $10bn from the central bank, an amount equivalent to more than half Botswana’s GDP, was never plausible, Mr Khama said.
“We didn’t have [$10bn] in the central bank in 2009 — and we don’t have it now,” Mr Khama said, adding that the bank’s audited annual reports had never revealed missing funds. “I didn’t walk into the vaults and walk out with the money on my shoulder.”
Moses Pelaelo, the Bank of Botswana’s governor, told lawmakers last year that the bank was not missing billions of dollars.
In office Mr Khama was also accused by opposition parties of having authoritarian tendencies. He denied that the institutional rot started under his presidency, but he said that he took full responsibility for picking a successor who became “power-drunk”.
“Nobody can be more confused than I am because I put him there. I just didn’t see it,” he said. “We have wiped out our democratic credentials through foolishness, victimisation and political intolerance.”
A spokesperson for Mr Masisi did not respond to a request for comment. The country’s director of public prosecutions could not be reached for comment. On Thursday Gerrie Nel, a South African lawyer appointed by Botswana to seek legal help from the South African authorities in the case, said the investigation was “unofficial” and “untested”.