Police have arrested four former employees of Nchalo Greenbelt Limited (NGBL) for various charges involving mismanagement of finances.
Deputy national police spokesperson Harry Namwaza has since identified the three as Imran Benard Malidadi, who was working as Human Resources and Administration Manager, Richard Nkhwazi, who was General Manager, and Tozer Khonje as well as Alex Msusa who was operations manager.
He said: ‘’In December 2023 Fiscal Police constituted investigations against the directors, some employees, and suppliers of NGBL. Facts show that ADMARC Limited entered into an agreement with NGBL in form of farming to pre-finance the product of cotton. In the agreement, ADMARC agreed to be an off-taker whereby all the cotton produce would be bought and processed by them at their Ginnery and then exported to various countries. To carry out this project, ADMARC obtained a loan from Export Development Fund (EDF) and then disbursed it to NGBL.”
However, Namwaza says during the period between 2018 to 2021 a total amount of K2, 536, 584, 699 was disbursed from EDF to NGBL through authorization from ADMARC but the project did not yield the intended results. This prompted the board of GBA to request for forensic audit which revealed there were many fraudulent transactions and dubious payments to the directors, some employees, and suppliers to siphon out funds.
GBA Board Chair Wester Peter Kosamu said their part was to hire forensic auditors from National Audit Office after seeing that some close to K2.6 Billion was not accounted for by their predecessors.
The three will answer six charges which are negligence by a public officer which contravenes Section 284 of the Penal Code, fraud false accounting, fraud other than pretenses which are against Section 319 (A) of the Penal Code, contravening procurement act which is contrary to Section 63 of PPDA, money laundering against Section 42 of the Financial Crimes Act and abuse of office.