Motsepe cleared! – Botswana court slams dirty money claims as lies

Bridget Motsepe

Gaborone – Botswana’s High Court ruled on Friday that a former government investigator’s claims of corruption against South African mining executive Bridgette Motsepe were false and ordered an apology.

Motsepe is the sister of South Africa’s first lady, Tshepo Motsepe, and billionaire Patrice Motsepe.

She was caught up in claims in 2019 that she conspired with Botswana’s former president Ian Khama to launder billions of dollars to be used to stoke political unrest and overthrow the stable southern African country’s government.

The allegations were judged in 2020 to be baseless in an investigation by a British law firm.

Friday’s High Court ruling was against an investigator with the government’s anti-corruption agency, Jako Hubona, who had repeated the claims, according to details released by the court.

The court order said Hubona must retract a statement he made in 2019 that Motsepe was a “co-signatory to bank accounts in which funds allegedly stolen from the Bank of Botswana were laundered and implicated her in financing terrorism”.

The statements were “unlawful, false and defamatory”, the ruling said, giving Hubona seven days to publish a notice that “unconditionally retracts and apologises” for the claims, it said.

Banks in South Africa also said at the time that it was not true that Motsepe, founder and chief executive of Mmakau Mining, was a co-signatory on the alleged bank account.

Khama ruled Botswana for 10 years from 2008 and later fell out with his handpicked successor Mokgweetsi Masisi, whom he accused of authoritarianism.

In 2024, Masisi lost power in a landslide win for President Duma Boko, ending nearly six decades in power for the Botswana Democratic Party.

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