Friday, February 7, 2025

Pilane files appeal for Lionjanga

Lobatse High Court judge Ian Kirby will, on a date still to be set, hear an appeal in which advocate Sydney Pilane wants the Court to quash a one-and-half jail term recently passed against his client, Armando Lionjanga, for corruption.

Lionjanga was convicted by Gaborone Chief Magistrate Lot Moroka.
In his appeal papers filed in the Lobatse High Court, Pilane is expected to submit that Moroka had misdirected himself, reference and relying upon the Anglo Saxon approach in seeking to discover the definition of “the immediate member of one’s family”; that he has also misdirected himself in making reference and relying upon the stories of the Popes of the Roman Catholic Churches in the manner in which they dealt with their nephews and the new Catholic dictionary in seeking to discover “the immediate member of one’s family”.

Advocate Pilane will also submit that Moroka erred and misdirected himself in rejecting defences relied upon by Lionjanga.

The defences he submitted are as follows: that the PPADB did not propose to deal with Eastgate Enterprises Limited; that Lionjanga honestly believed at the material time that a self-imposed practice of declaring a social interest and remaining in the meeting invariably carried on at PPADB was a proper and lawful practice; that the PPADB Act Chap 42.08 does not in any of its provisions require that the Executive Chairman and or a Director of PPADB declare a social interest; that Kagiso Makgekgenene, Lionjanga’s nephew, was a member of his immediate family and, finally, that Moroka misdirected himself in determining that reference could not be made to analogous branches of our law in the effort to seek out the meaning of the “the immediate member of one’s family, as employed in subsection 3 (1) of the DCEC Act.

Lionjanga was found guilty for having failed to disclose his interest in a PPADB meeting when the Board was making decisions on awarding a tender to some companies, including Eastgate Enterprises, which is owned by his nephew, Makgekgenene.

Ambrose Mubika of the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime, who was prosecuting the case, said they intend to defend the matter.

RELATED STORIES

Read this week's paper