Mohalenyane Phakela / Moorosi Tsiane
THE government has “fraudulently” paid M8.4 million to a controversial South African businessman, Thulani Majola, who was in November 2021 awarded a M33.6 million contract to supervise the upgrade of Moshoeshoe I International Airport.
The Lesotho Times established this week that the M8.4 million payment had been made to Mr Majola’s Lesedi Technical Engineering (LTE) Consulting by the government in May 2023 despite a pending court challenge by a group of local contractors, who claim that the airport tender had been rigged in Mr Majola’s favour.
The payment to Lesedi Technical Engineering (LTE) should never have been made in the first place because it is not the company that actually won the contract but another of Mr Majola’s companies named LTE Consulting Engineers.
The local contractors went to court after it was established that the company that Mr Majola had used to bid for the airport project – LTE Consulting Engineers – had been provisionally liquidated by the time he was awarded the contract. The company was provisionally liquidated on 9 June 2021 with the liquidation being made final in February 2022.
Lesotho’s then Ministry of Transport had announced LTE Consulting Engineers as the preferred bidder for the Moshoeshoe I Airport project on 10 June 2021, a day after the Gauteng High Court had issued the provisional liquidation order. The ministry was seemingly oblivious of that liquidation development. It remained so even after the final liquidation order was issued. The ministry only became aware of the developments in June 2022 after the South African investigative journalism outlet, Amabhungane, contacted the then transport Principal Secretary Maile Masoebe, inquiring about the scam. Amabhungane had then proceeded to publish a story outlining the chicanery in the awarding of the project.
Nonetheless, the then government of Prime Minister Moeketsi Majoro had proceeded with the contract with Mr Masoebe convening a press conference on 27 June 2022 to defend Mr Majola and his company, despite that the liquidation story was now well known. Mr Masoebe and his minister, Tsoeu Mokeretla, had appeared hell bent on proceeding with the project despite all the protestations from local contractors and despite the simple common-sense rule that a project cannot be awarded to a liquidated company.
It had therefore been hoped that Prime Minister Sam Matekane’s new government would terminate LTE’s contract when it took over in October 2022, basing the decision on the obvious fact that Mr Majola’s company had been liquidated and the controversial businessman had been irregularly awarded the project.
But to the surprise of all and sundry the newly merged Public Works and Transport ministry, under the leadership of Matjato Moteane, has done the exact opposite. It has proceeded to make the M8.4 million payment to Mr Majola, ostensibly in lieu of work at the airport. The exact nature of that work could not be verified by the time of going to print.
What makes the payment appear fraudulent and illegal however is that it was not made to LTE Consulting, the company that was ostensibly awarded the tender notwithstanding its liquidation. The M8.4 million payment had instead been made to another of Mr Majola’s LTE iterations in the name of Lesedi Technical Engineering Consulting. It appears the alteration of the name was a well-crafted scheme to evade the liquidation issue and justify the irregular award.
In terms of the law, a payment cannot be made to an entity that was not awarded the actual contract. It is now being alleged Mr Majola connived with unnamed ministry officials to alter the name of the awardee to the similarly abbreviated Lesedi Technical Engineering (LTE) consulting despite that it is not this latter company that won the tender.
Authoritative sources say the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Offences (DCEO) must now step in and unravel the chicanery underpinning the M8.4 million payment to Mr Majola. Lesotho’s treasury cannot afford to continue being pilfered in this way, particularly under the watch of a government that was elected on promises to end graft.
Mr Majola has nonetheless rubbished the allegations, saying he had in fact changed the name of the original LTE Consulting to Lesedi Technical Engineering Consulting on 17 February 2021. The problem for him is that all the communications from the government of Lesotho to him were made in the name of the liquidated LTE Consulting Engineers.
Mr Majola himself had obtained the guarantee for the project from Lesotho General National Insurance company in the name of LTE Consulting Engineers on 12 November 2021. Mr Majola is therefore obviously lying.
A letter written on 25 May 2023 by Lesedi Technical Engineering to the new Ministry of Public Works and Transport Principal Secretary, Tsepang Koele, proved that Mr Majola had received the payment of M8.4 million as professional fees to Lesedi for the project which had been awarded to LTE Consulting.
The letter was signed by one Sham Maharaj, whose designation in Lesedi Technical Engineering is not cited.
Maharaj refers in the letter to a meeting of 23 March 2023 between Lesedi Technical Engineering and Ms Koele. Maharaj states that the meeting had discussed three options; the first being that Lesedi Technical Engineering proceeds with work and is paid the remainder of M25,2 million or the Public Works and Transport Ministry reduces the scope of work and pays the company professional fees of M10 Million. The last option would be for Lesedi Technical Engineering and the government to amicably agree to a termination of the contract with the company being compensated with M8 million for loss of profit.
“Whilst Lesedi is fully committed to the successful completion of the project, we do however understand that the project funding is a significant hurdle for the ministry,” Maharaj wrote.
“Based on the discussions held, Lesedi is more amenable to the option of an amicable termination of the contract, with compensation (M8 million).”
The M8 million would be on top of the M8.4 million Lesedi Technical Engineering had already been paid.
The Lesotho Times has been unable to establish the ministry’s feedback to this letter and the suggested options. However, what is crystal clear is that Lesedi Technical Engineering has already pocketed M8.4 million for what is claimed to be professional services, even though it is not the company that was awarded the airport tender.
Minister Moteane now faces accusations that he had facilitated the payment in the hope that Mr Majola would use part of it to pay for rental arrears of over M400 000 owed to the minister’s company, Sekhametsi Consortium, which owns the Sekhametsi Building where Mr Majola’s LTE Consulting rented space. The company’s furniture had been locked up at the building over its failure to pay rent. However, if it is true that that was Minister Moteane’s motivation in facilitating the payment, he might be disappointed in the end. The Lesotho Times has been notified that Mr Majola has still not yet paid the rental arrears despite getting the M8,4 million way back in May 2023. The offices were still locked when our news crew checked yesterday and Mr Majola is still running things from South Africa.
Efforts to get a comment from either PS Koele and Minister Moteane have repeatedly failed. Ms Koele said she was in a meeting when contacted on Monday. She promised to revert but had not done so at the time of going to print. It has also proved a tall order to get a comment from Minister Moteane since we started working on this story in June 2023. His promises to revert have not materialised and he has ignored subsequent follow up attempts to get his comment on this specific story even though he has spoken on other issues.
His ministry‘s decision to pay a company that was not contracted for the project and to continue engagements with the controversial Mr Majola, who has been caught up in several corruption storms in South Africa, is likely to raise questions about the commitment of Mr Matekane’s government to end rampant corruption in Lesotho.
