Dispatch Online (Sapa-AFP)
October 29, 2002

MASERU — The Lesotho High Court fined Canadian engineering firm Acres International R22,5million in a landmark case yesterday for bribing a top official in a major water project in Lesotho.

“The court wants to send a clear message that companies wanting contracts should not even think of taking a risk in trying to bribe officials,” judge Mahapela Lehohla said before imposing the fine.

The judgment and fine were landmark decisions, according to Fiona Darroch, a London-based barrister attending the trial on behalf of several international non-governmental organisations. “This is entirely unprecedented. This has not happened anywhere else in Africa as far as we know,” she said.

The Ontario-based company, which had denied the charges, was fined for its part in bribing the former head of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, Masupha Sole, through an agent from 1991 to 1998.

Lehohla said utterances by senior Acres officials — that the trial showed the risk Canadian firms ran when doing business in a country like Lesotho — were nothing short of “contempt”.