As heads continue to roll over the P110 million lawsuit by investigating firm, Infotrac, over what they say were extraordinary services rendered to Debswana, The Head of Security at Debswana headquarters Mpho Kewakae has decided to quit his top post.
Kewakae had been suspended alongside the head of Security at Debswana Jwaneng mine and two others after a damning whistleblower report.
Early this year, investigating firm, Infotrac, slapped Debswana with a demand letter of P 110 million.
Infotrac claims services offered to Debswana had been of covert nature, including amongst other things spying on the late Managing Director, Albert Milton, and his alleged girlfriend.
It is also apparent that Infotrac had serviced Debswana for several years, supplying them with spying equipment.
Debswana has continuously denied allegations of spying on employees and this week they were also reluctant to confirm or deny findings of an independent forensic probe that allegedly revealed otherwise.
They also would not be dragged into commenting on the sudden resignation by their head of security. “As previously communicated, Debswana respects and upholds its policies pertaining to employer/employee confidentiality, hence we cannot share information regarding the employment status of current or former employees publicly unless there are compelling circumstances that require us to do so,” they said in response to a Voice questionnaire.
“With regard to the INFOTRAC litigation, the matter is currently being addressed by the courts. As such we would not want to pre-empt the outcome. Suffice to say, Debswana is currently defending the matter, and decisions on how to manage the case are informed by our internal legal risk management policies,” Debswana further added.
The court case was scheduled for a roll call last week Friday but was postponed as the court had closed down as a result of Covid-19 contact tracing.
In court papers, Infotrac claims that they were briefed by some senior officials from Debswana to deliver the covert operations which went beyond their initial scope of the contract.
Following Debswana’s refusal to pay the bill, Infotrac dragged the matter to court in what promises to be an interesting legal battle.
“The material terms of the oral consultancy service agreement between the parties were, inter alia, following that the plaintiff (Infotrac) would at special instances and request of the defendant (Debswana), render to the defendant, consultancy services, in the form of investigation of an alleged love relationship between Mr. Albert Milton and Candy Godiwe, as well as favoritism at work on the latter by the former,” reads the cause of action suit.
In a notice to defend, Debswana denied the terms of the contract entered into between Infotrac and themselves and further argued that what they had contracted the firm for, they had paid for it.
