Kitilya case referred back to lower court
Dar es Salaam. The economic crimes case against a former Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) commissioner general, Mr Harry Kitilya, and four others took a new twist yesterday.
That was when the Corruption and Economic Crimes Division of the High Court of Tanzania in Dar es Salaam referred the case back to the Kisutu Resident Magistrates’ Court for further action.
Mr Kitilya was formally charged with eight counts of fraud and money laundering at the Kisutu Resident Magistrates’ Court in Dar es Salaam in April 2016.
Facing the same charges with Mr Kitilya were a former head of Investment Banking at Stanbic Bank, Ms Shose Sinare, and the bank’s former chief legal counsel, Sioi Graham Solomon.
The charges are generally about occasioning the government a loss of $6 million (roughly Sh14 billion at the prevailing exchange rate).
The three are accused of committing the offences in Dar es Salaam and outside Tanzania between February 2012 and June 2015, pocketing $6 million in all allegedly as facilitation fees payable to Enterprise Growth Market Advisors Limited.
This was ostensibly for facilitating a foreign bond of $600 million advanced to the government through Stanbic Bank Tanzania Ltd. But, in January 2019, the eight charges against the trio were formally dropped by the Director of Public Prosecution – and the three were charged with 58 counts. This time round, two senior officials of the ministry of Finance – the commissioner for Policy Analysis & Debt, Mr Bedason Shallanda, and his assistant, Mr Alfred Misana – were joined in the new case.
The five accused were then charged with “organised crime, forgery, uttering false documents, using documents intended to mislead, obtaining money by false pretenses, money laundering and occasioning loss to a specified authority.”
The case was then formally closed at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court on February 12, 2019, and was shifted to the High Court’s Corruption and Economic Crimes Division.
However, in an interesting turn of events, High Court Judge Sirilius Matupa returned the case to Kisutu, on account of several shortcomings in the proceedings in the lower court.
In the event, the five re-appeared before the Kisutu Court’s Principal Resident Magistrate, Huruma Shaidi, for rectification of the shortcomings.
Defence lawyer Charles Alex said during the Committal Proceedings that the Kisutu Resident Magistrates’ Court also did not identify all the accused persons by their full names – and only mentioned the names of the first accused, while the other four were referred to merely as “co-accused.”
Following the submissions, Principal State Attorney Pendo Makondo told the court that the prosecution was ready to read the committal proceedings afresh after rectifying the identified shortcomings.
However, the defendant’s side opposed that move, with defence lawyers Alex Mgongolwa and Majura Magafu arguing that the proposed procedure would only consume more precious time.
They, therefore, proposed minor amendments to be made, namely including the names of all the accused persons in the charge sheet.
“All the suspects will be included in the list as required,” said Magistrate Shaidi as the suspects were returned to remand prison.
The suspects will now appear at the High Court’s Corruption and Economic Crimes Division tomorrow.
