Lesotho Court Convicts Canadian company of Bribery

On September 17, 2002, the Lesotho High Court found Acres International, the Canadian engineering consulting company, guilty on two counts of bribery involving US $430,000 ($440,000) to obtain contracts in an $8 billion project to furnish water from Lesotho to South Africa. Acres said it did not know that Zalisiwonga Bam, its now deceased local representative in Lesotho and Canada?s honorary counsel to Lesotho, had made illegal payments to Mr. Sole. Earlier in the year, the Lesotho High Court found Masupha Sole, the former chief executive of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority, guilty of accepting bribes from international companies working on the World Bank financed water-transfer project. Notwithstanding the Acres warning, Ryan Hoover of the Africa Programme has characterized the evidence in support of conviction as powerful: ?(t)he representative passed money to the executive at roughly the same time Acres won contracts; and the company failed to provide evidence of any other services their highly paid representative rendered them. The judge made a well reasoned decision: Acres?s representative was simply a conduit for bribes.? Mr. Hoover is also calling for the World Bank to act against companies convicted of corruption, including declaring Acres ineligible to receive Bank-Financed contracts.