Patricia Adams
Toronto Star
November 1, 2002

One Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
E-mail: lettertoed@thestar.ca

Environmental News Network
E-mail: news@enn.com

Re: “South Africans applaud Lesotho ruling against Canadian firm,”
(AP/CP) October 29, 2002

Dear Editor:

Acres International, the Canadian engineering firm sentenced this week in Lesotho for bribing an African official, is misleading your readers by claiming that “it was awarded the contract only after an international competitive bidding process, supervised by Lesotho and South Africa and approved by the World Bank.” (South Africans applaud Lesotho ruling against Canadian firm, (AP/CP) October 29, 2002)

In fact, evidence before the Lesotho court revealed that the lucrative contract around which the bribery charges revolve – known as contract 65 – was not “competitively bid,” but rather “sole-sourced” to Acres by Mr. Sole, the former chief executive of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA). Mr. Sole is now serving 18 years in jail for taking more than a million dollars in bribes from Acres International and some dozen other engineering firms.

As for the supervision of the contract award, Judge Mahapela Lehohla ruled that contract 65 was signed by the LHDA without the necessary prior approval of the joint Lesotho-South African oversight body known as the Joint Permanent Technical Commission, but “with the connivance of Acre’s personnel who were in the LHDA.” Nor did the World Bank approve the project before the deal was inked.

Based on the evidence before him, Judge Mahapela Lehohla concluded “that none of the major milestones leading up to the conclusion of contract 65 were reached with the requisite prior approval in writing,” and that the establishment of contract 65 was rife with “impropriety” and “founded on a massive fraud through the machinations of a very corrupt and dishonest Chief Executive of the LHDA.”

Yours sincerely,

Patricia Adams
Executive Director
Probe International
225 Brunswick Avenue
Toronto, ON
M5S 2M6
tel: 1 (416) 964-9223 (ext 227), fax: 964-8239
https://journal.probeinternational.org/