Financial institutions that lost millions of Pula with the collapse of Lobtrans will have to wait a bit longer to know whether the company managing director and his associates will ever be tried because police say investigations are still in progress.
Head of the Serious Crime Squad, Detective Senior Superintendent, Victor Mabina, said “our investigations are far from over”.
“This is a very complex case because it has a lot of documents, some of which have been taken by liquidators as well as by the financial institutions that fell victim to the company under investigation,” he said.
Mabina said that they had not yet recovered even a “thebe” in the alleged millions that the company is said to have cheated out of some financial institutions that funded Lobtrans, adding that chances of recovering the money are very slim because the company has already being liquidated.
He added that sometimes it is not easy to get some of those documents because the process of getting them is quite long and this delays their investigations.
Mabina added that, because of the complexity of the case, he is not yet sure when the case will be ready to go before court but pointed out that they were working around the clock to get as much evidence as they can.
He said that, apart from the company’s four directors who are no where to be found, they are highly interested in Lobtrans’ former managing director who is believed to be hiding somewhere in South Africa and who he described as the “prime suspect” and whose warrant of arrest he said had long been issued.
Mabina said that they are working with the South African police who he said are assisting them to locate the suspect.
“People must understand that fraud cases take time because they mainly deal with documents which need forensic analysis,” he said.
Mabina said there are two possible criminal charges that the suspects will be charged with and these include forgery and altering information, adding that more charges may follow, depending on the outcome of the investigation.
Lobtrans, which was based in Lobatse, collapsed and was liquidated early this year and many of workers lost their jobs.
