Saturday, April 19, 2025

KPMG clears Letshego of misappropriation allegations

The Letshego Holdings Limited special board committee which recently commissioned KPMG Chartered Accountants Botswana (KPMG) to investigate and report on the allegations at Letshego Holdings Limited concluded that all the allegations are unfounded and are without merit.
On 23rd February 2015 an anonymous email circulated to a number of media outlets, investors and other third parties. The anonymous email contained corruption allegations against the Letshego Company and its management team.
The Letshego board undertook to conduct an independent investigation of matters raised in the email through an oversight special board committee. “The board takes this opportunity to state for the record that it has full confidence in its Group
Managing Director and his team and their ability to execute on the agreed strategic journey,” reads the statement.
Information also contained in the Letshego statement is that the board affirms that the company supports the principles on ‘whistle blowing’ and that a number of internal channels are available to staff including an ‘ethics hotline’ that is independently operated by a firm of consultants for use by any member of staff or stakeholder if they wish to raise concerns anonymously.
“This investigation was based on information provided by the Company and scope agreed with the special board committee. Based on the report of factual findings from KPMG, the board concluded that all the allegations are unfounded and are without merit,” reads the statement.
The email at the time accused Letshego Group Managing Director Christopher Low of intentionally trying to manipulate financial figures for the latest full year results and further goes on to accuse him of hiding information from the board of directors of loss making entities in some of their African operations.
The company commits 1 percent of all its profits to social issues. These funds are divided according to country contribution to overall profit. It further said that a total of   P3.6 million is to be given to a company called Primary Care Education International that is owned and associated with the wife of the Group MD Chris Low. 
“Currently┬áthere are several unjustified payments from the Letshego Group to companies and consultants based in Britain and other countries that have no contract or that nobody knows what they are doing.┬á Over 50,000 pounds are being siphoned out of the company on a monthly basis to these companies or individuals.┬á These we suspect are business associates that are being used to defraud┬áthe company,” reads the email.

RELATED STORIES

Read this week's paper