BDC'S Fengyue mobilizes

Fengyue Glass Manufacturing Company, the Chinese firm at the heart of the Botswana Development Corporation (BDC) corruption scandal, is hiring.

In a small advert that appeared in the government-owned Daily News last Friday, the company is looking for engineers in various areas.

Some of the positions advertised are Chemical Engineer, Material Engineer, Equipment Engineer, Construction Engineer and Mechanical Engineer.

This week, the Parliamentary Select Committee sat to kick off its investigations into the multimillion-pula project after allegations of corruption at the company surfaced in the media last year.

A recent forensic audit of the joint venture between BDC and Shanghai Fengyue BVI, known as Botswana Fengyue Glass (Pty) Ltd., has cast the spotlight on corporate culture at the state investment body.  Some BDC executives have been accused of entering into the deal with the British Virgin Islands company, despite the fact that it was not a suitable candidate for such a venture.

In the process of facilitating the deal, the executives broke rules and ignored established corporate principles. The officials also made illegal concessions to the company, including breaking laws to help assist it establish the joint venture. Some of the executives even allegedly falsified a resolution of the BDC board in order to facilitate establishment of the company, ignoring a much more suitable company with extensive experience in the glass industry.

They favoured a company that had no track record in the business, signing a letter of credit of almost double the figure originally committed to by the board without consent.

Furthermore, the BDC executives involved relaxed performance bond conditions that were put in place to protect partners in such a venture.

The joint venture refused investigators access to its records. "We found no evidence that Botswana Fengyue complied with any corporate principles," the forensic report says.