Mramba, Yona jailed three years for office abuse; Mgonja set free

Former Finance Minister Basil Mramba and his Energy and Mineral counterpart Daniel Yona will have to spend the next three years behind bars, serving their jail sentence for abuse of office and subjecting the government to 11.7bn/- loss.

They were convicted in the historical trial related to the procurement of gold assayers firm, Alex Stewart Government Business Corporation.

Observers say this is the first court decision in the judiciary’s history to condemn influential former cabinet ministers to jail on criminal charges.

Two members of a panel hearing the historical case, Judge Sam Rumanyika and Mr Saul Kinemela, who is a senior official in the Labour Commission, convicted the two ex-ministers of the offences after they were satisfied by the evidence given by prosecution witnesses.

In the judgment, the two members of the court who sat at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court as Principal Resident Magistrates rejected the shield applied by the convicts that President Benjamin Mkapa had authorised the acquisition of the gold assayers company.

“We do not think that the president had directed urgent procurement of the Alex Steward Assayers without following the procedure.

The president, otherwise, should have so directed in express terms,” Judge Rumanyika, declared when reading the judgment.

They further held that the Government Notices that were granted by Mramba for tax exemptions were arbitrarily issued in total disregard of the advice given by the Attorney General (AG) and officers from the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), leading to pecuniary loss.

The judgment of the court was not commonly reached as one member of the panel, Judge John Utamwa, gave a dissenting judgment. He had differed with others in respect of evidence given to have proved the charges against the two convicts.

However, the court acquitted former Permanent Secretary (PS) with the Treasury, Gray Mgonja, after the prosecution, through its 13 witnesses, miserably failed to prove the charges against him.

Professor Geofrey Shaidi, for the PS, was satisfied with the acquittal of his client. Advocate Peter Swai, for Mramba, told the ‘Daily News’ that he would immediately appeal to the High Court against both conviction and sentence.

Likewise, Counsel Elisa Msuya, for Yona, expressed similar position having been dissatisfied by the judgment. Immediately after delivery of the judgment, some close relatives of the convicts, who had filled the courtroom above capacity, broke into tears, some not believing what was happening.

One of them had to be assisted by others to leave the courtroom after losing control. In the majority judgment, the court convicted Mramba of all 11 counts. He had been charged with 10 counts relating to abuse of office and one count of occasioning loss to the government.

In each count, he was sentenced to three years in jail for each offence. For Yona, the court convicted him of four counts relating to abuse of office and one count of occasioning loss to the government for which it sentenced him to three years in jail for each count.

The court gave the duo an alternative sentence of paying 5m/- fine in respect of occasioning loss count. Before provision of the sentence, advocates Swai and Msuya, requested the court to impose a lenient sentence on the convicts considering their age.

It was said that Mramba is 75 years old while Yona had attained 76 years of age. The advocates submitted that the two ex-ministers have no criminal records and both served the government in various capacities diligently.

According to the counsels, the court should also consider the health conditions their clients were experiencing as they had been frequently seeking permission of the court to go to India for treatment.

On the other hand, Principal State Attorney Tumaini Kweka, for the prosecution, requested the court to hand down appropriate sentence for the convicts according to the law. He asked the court to consider the gravity of the offence committed and the positions held by the convicts.

It was alleged that the two former ministers committed the offences between August 2002 and June 14, 2004, in Dar es Salaam, by giving preferential treatments to M/S Alex Stewart (Assayers) Government Business Corporation.

The case followed three years of investigations by the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) and the police into the suspicious hiring of Alex Stewart (Assayers) Government Business Corporation (ASA) to audit gold production in Tanzania.

The firm was in 2003 controversially assigned through a contract, which saw it receive a whopping of 50 million US dollars in gold audit fees.

It completed the assignment and left the country in August 2007. It is alleged that Gold Assayers Government Business Corporation was paid an average of one million US dollars every month from June 2003 to August 2007.

Source: Daily News (7/7/2015)