EPA Task Team Report out this week
2008-08-08 10:28:41
By Correspondent Felister Peter
The implementation report of the presidential task force on firms implicated in the EPA scam shall be made public within a week, The Guardian has authoritatively learnt.
Finance and Economic Affairs minister Mustafa Mkulo, broke the news in an interview, moments after signing an educational grant agreement with Japanese Ambassador Makoto Ito on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam.
The terms of reference of the Task Force, as stated by Chief Secretary Philemon Luhanjo in January, this year were as follows:
-Take appropriate legal steps in relation to the scandal and recover all the stolen money.
-Bring to justice all the individuals who were involved.
-Bring to justice all the companies through which the 133,015,186,220.74/- was siphoned from External Payment Arrears Account of the Central Bank.
``The report will be released next week. It shall contain all the relevant information that people need,`` he said.
In an apparent response to increasing calls for immediate release of the report, Mkulo appealed for patience.
He said the committee was making final touches on the report, which he said would answer most of the relevant questions lingering around the EPA account scam.
Mkulo said the presidential task-force had failed to complete its task on schedule because some crucial information was missing from the audit report that had been compiled by the auditing firm Ernst and Young.
The minister said it would have been better to first give time to Ernst and Young to fill the identified gaps before the presidential task-force started its work.
Early this year, President Jakaya Kikwete formed a three man team comprising Attorney General Johnson Mwanyika, Inspector General of Police Said Mwema and the Director General of the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB), Edward Hoseah, to carry out a high-level investigation on the EPA scandal.
The team was supposed to investigate and take legal action against all companies and individuals who were named in the audit report as conducting the dubious deals that were transacted at the Central Bank.
The Task Force was set to complete its work by June this year but it has failed to beat the deadline.
The Ernst and Young, who were commissioned to do the job by the office of the Controller and Auditor General (CAG), undertook the auditing between September and December last year.
The report revealed that in the year 2005/06, dubious payments to the tune of 133,015,186,220.74/- were made to 22 domestic companies under the EPA scheme.
Out of the total sum, 90,359,078,804/- was paid to 13 companies based on fake and forged documentation. Other nine companies were paid an equivalent of 42,656,107,417/- without presenting any supporting document to authorise such payments.
Two companies, Rashtas (T) Ltd and G&T International Ltd were nowhere to be found in the books of the Business Registration and Licensing Agency (Brela).
Due to the revelations, President Kikwete sacked BoT governor Daudi Balali and replaced him with his deputy, Prof Benno Ndulu. Balalli has since died in the US.
It remains to be seen how far the Task Force has gone to execute its mandate, apart from collecting over 40bn/- out of the missing funds.
So far, no firm or individual has been indicted in relation to the scam, in line with the team`s terms of reference.