Thursday, February 6, 2025

Corporate Governance has its back against the wall

Nobody in their right mind should underestimate events unfolding at the Botswana Public Officers Pension Fund.

Right before our eyes, Corporate Governance is being torn asunder.

A multi billion pula pension fund, the biggest in the country is being stripped bare.

Mercilessly, vultures are descending on it like a dead beast.

And nobody is raising their hand in protest or on behalf of the pensioners.

Internally, those who dare to stop the loot are being threatened with expulsion from their jobs.

For example, it would look like there are serious attempts to remove the Chief Executive because she has been foiling full throttle attempts to loot the pensioners money.

There is something peculiar about the corruption surrounding BPOPF money.

The scale of the money involved, the confidence of those involved together with their carefree demeanour all combined are proof that these are people well certain that they cannot be held accountable.

That is demonstrated by the confidence and blustering nature of some of those Trustees fingered for acts of corruption.

Botswana Public Officers Pension Fund has become a target of mafia like rustlers masquerading as asset fund managers.

The nation should wake up to defend BOPF.

The attacks against BPOPF, so ably coordinated with explicit approval of some board members smacks of illicit Russian business practices.

The extent to which corruption has been spreading its tentacles around pensioners money at BPOPF is something that cannot go unchallenged.

Stories of looting have been going on for far too long.

Yet there is not much evidence to suggest that as the regulator, NBFIRA (Non Banking Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority) is moving swiftly enough to get to the bottom of the ever more glaring evidence of impropriety.

We call on the regulator to institute an audit of BPOPF.

Such an audit should be far reaching, including assessing the governance structures of companies that are managing BPOPF assets.

The priority of course is saving pensioners money. But so too should be identifying, finding and ultimately holding accountable all the people that have been stealing such funds.

There have been murmurs of thousands of pensioners that are missing on the database.

These allegations too should be investigated and those found responsible held accountable.

Companies found to have transgressed the governance dictates should be blacklisted and denied ever doing business with BPOPF.

It has not escaped our attention that some of these companies do not even have such elementary governance structures like Boards of Directors.

The way some of the companies managing BPOPF money are being run entirely undermines all the known basis of good corporate governance.

To save BPOPF from being looted and also to ensure safety of pensioners money, it is important that people sitting on the BPOPF board are people of sound business judgment.

It is not sufficient to appoint to the BPOPF Board people who are there ex-officio.

Such people are not only weak but immensely susceptible to wolves sprawling and marauding the asset management industry.

The combined ramifications of events at BPOPF should worry us all.

The amount of BPOPF money at risk has also reached such huge proportions that the potential of a spillover should anything happen there would cause shock waves across the entire national economy.

This requires as a matter of rule strict and stringent oversight of what happens at BPOPF.

What we are picking for now is that BPOPF management does not enjoy the full support of the Trustees.

Instead it is the companies doing business with BPOPF that are closer to the Trustees.

That is deplorable, to say the least.

We only use BPOPF as a case study.

There is no point beating about the bush. There has been a steep deterioration of Corporate Governance across the whole country.

This has been made worse and indeed possible by entrenched culture of political patronage that has grown parallel with weakening of institutions.

As a result a culture of impunity has taken root.

That these shocking levels of corruption take place in a country widely extolled for least corruption in the continent should be most alarming.

If indeed Botswana is the least corrupt among African countries, we then shudder to think what other Africans across the continent have to put up with.

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