Mineral Development Company Botswana (MDCB) disclosed last week that it “led an investigation into an asset’s low dividends and provided various recommendations to the Ministry of Minerals and Energy”.
Botswana has a15% shareholding in De Beers. MDCB Chief Executive Officer Matome Malema told Botswana editors that “we investigated a certain company that I cannot name, and we found a company” with a lot of intrafirm transactions.
A source close to the investigations told Sunday Standard that the company that Malema would not name was De Beers.
This corelates with a Botswana Unified Revenue Services audit report on De Beers operations which was leaked earlier this year. The report suggests that profits from the De Beers operation in Botswana are shifted to the De Beers subsidiary in UK through inflated service charges.
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