KIGOMA urban law maker on ACT-Wazalendo ticket Zitto Kabwe now wants Speaker of the National Assembly, Mr Job Ndugai, to form a parliamentary select-committee to probe into $6 million (about 12bn/-) bribery scandal in a treasury bond deal with a UK bank on March 8, 2013.
The outspoken MP demanded in Parliament
that the committee should launch investigation into the UK based
Standard ICBC and Stanbic Tanzania to obtain the entire truth on the
matter. Reports say the hefty bribe facilitated the purchase of $600
million (Sh1.2 trillion) treasury bonds in 2013 by the UK-based Standard
Bank.
Debating the budget estimates for the
Ministry of State in the President’s Office (Good Governance and Public
Service Management), Mr Kabwe argued that on March 8, 2013, the
government took an external loan facility of USD 600 million (about
1.2tri/-) by the help of UK’s Standard Bank, now known as Standard Bank
ICIC plc, adding that if the government is implementing the contract,
the government started servicing the loan in March 2016.
According to the Kigoma Urban
legislator, the loan was marred by serious corruption allegations that
have landed some officials in court.
The MP presented a letter of Tanzanians
living in the Diaspora who wrote to the Prevention and Combatting of
Corruption Bureau (PCCB), demanding that the government launch
investigations into the saga. However, he pointed out, PCCB used reports
by UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which did not investigate the UK’s
Standard Bank.
“Today, PCCB is being helped and advised
by experts from UK while the bank that is implicated in this scam is
from that country,’’ he noted adding that the corruption watchdog was
afraid to charge the UK based bank because those giving advise on the
matter were from UK.
For the objective truth to be known to
Tanzanians and appropriate legal steps to be instituted against
offenders, it was high time Parliament inject in section 120(2) to form
an independent parliamentary select committee to investigate into the
multi-million dollars scam
No comments :
Post a Comment