Govt set to contest Mramba, Yona jail sentence

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Former cabinet ministers Basil Mramba (left) and Daniel Yona (right), as well as former Treasury permanent secretary Gray Mgonja appear at the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court in Dar es Salaam yesterday

Dar es Salaam. The government has filed a notice of intention to appeal against a three-year jail sentence imposed on former cabinet ministers Basil Mramba and Daniel Yona.

In the notice filed yesterday at Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court, the government contested the three-year jail term imposed on the former ministers along with the acquittal of former Treasury permanent secretary Gray Mgonja.

Speaking with this paper, Principal Resident Magistrate In-charge of the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court Mr Cyprian Mkeha, confirmed receiving the notice of appeal.

“It’s true that the government filed a notice of appeal opposing the sentence given to mr Mramba and Yona along with the acquittal of Mgonja,” said Mkeha.

Yona and Mramba who served as Finance and Energy and Minerals ministers respectively in Benjamin William Mkapa’s administration, were sentenced on Monday by the Kisutu court to serve three years in jail after being convicted on several counts of abuse of office and occasioning Sh11.7 billion loss to the government.

However, in the judgement, the court acquitted former permanent secretary with the Treasury Gray Mgonja who was charged alongside the two for what the judges said was lack of evidence.

The case is related to the controversial hiring of an auditing firm Alex Stewart Assayers Government Business Corporation.

The prosecution had alleged that the former ministers broke the law when they granted tax exemption to Alex Stewart Assayers Government Business Corporation, a company that was controversially hired to audit gold in Tanzania in 2003.

The deal saw the company receiving a whopping $50 million (about Sh65 billion) in gold audit fees paid at an average of Sh1.3 billion per month from June 2003 to August, 2007. The company completed the assignment and left the country in August, 2007

Two of the three-member-panel that heard the case—Judge Sam Rumanyika and Mr Saul Kinemela, a senior official in the Labour Commission, said the prosecution proved their case “beyond all reasonable doubt.”

They rejected defence given by the former ministers that then President Benjamin Mkapa had authorised the hiring of the gold assayers firm. They said, there was no sufficient evidence that the Head of State had a direct hand in the matter.