BoT overpaid advocate Mkono: CAG report
April 14, 2008
THE Bank of Tanzania (BoT) made excessive payment of legal fees at the tune of 5bn/- to Mkono and Company advocates during the last financial year, as part of the charges for handling the Valambia case.
Controller and Auditor General (CAG), Ludovick Utouh, says in his report on the financial statements of Public Authorities and other bodies for the 2006/07 that the amount is twice as much of what was paid in the previous fiscal year (2.9bn/-).
“This makes the total payment made as of June 30th 2006 reach 8.1bn/-”, he says. According to the CAG, the amount paid is already more than 10 per cent of the 60bn/- the case’s contingent liability to the government.
“The bank may end up paying excessively high legal fees on the case, considering the fact that neither the outcome nor the time frame the matter will take is known,” he cautions. Meanwhile, the CAG says that a number of parastatals have not repaid 175.3bn/- in loan issued under government guarantees.
“The reasons for failure to repay the loans and efforts of the guarantor in fulfilling the guaranteed conditions were not disclosed,” he says. Mr Utouh warns that non- repayment of the loans may lead the government to bear the liability and loss of tax payer’s money.
He urges the government and respective accounting officers to ensure the outstanding loans are recovered and remitted to relevant authorities. Mr Utouh’s report also reveals an outstanding loan of 63.2bn/- issued to various beneficiaries.
It includes a 35.4bn/- SONGAS loan which TANESCO has defaulted to pay. Another 15.2bn/-, Mr Utouh says, is a TTCL loan which is being dealt with by the Technical Debt Management Committee (TDMC), under debt swap arrangements. “Efforts have been made to recover the arrears, including issuing reminder letters to concerned institutions,” he says.
Source: The Daily News Newspaper
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