The director of Motiganz Botswana, a diamond and polishing company based in Mogoditshane, also a subsidiary of Motiganz Diamond Group, Modehay Dayan and his assistant, Clifford Mogomotsi, were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at the company premises on Tuesday and detained overnight at Broadhurst Police Station.
Superintendent Sergeant Marapo of the CID referred our enquiries to Broadhurst Police Station Commander Bonosi Molapisi who confirmed the arrests but could not be drawn into discussing the charges, saying their investigations were still at an early stage.
“I cannot reveal the charges to be laid against the suspects as our investigations are still at a preliminary stage,” Molapisi said. “The suspects have since been released pending investigations.”
An employee at the company, speaking on condition of anonymity, alleges the two, together with a Botswana Power Corporation employee, were arrested in connection with a story we published in our April 11, 2013 issue in which the company was accused of stealing power from a BPC source to power the company’s production plant and bribing a BPC employee.
In an interview, Motiganz’ Clifford Mogomotsi dismissed the allegations as baseless. Our investigations had revealed the company had at one point been investigated for a similar offence and subsequently charged by the Botswana Power Corporation.
“The company has once been found to be stealing electricity from one of our sources and were charged accordingly. We will investigate again to ensure they do not repeat the same offence,” said Charles Chalashika, BPC’s Loss Control Unit at the time.
Meanwhile, CID officers are said to have stormed the company premises again on Thursday afternoon and rounded up thirteen employees of Chinese origin some of whom alleged to be working without proper documents.
