Tanzania’s Minister of Agriculture, Japhet Hasunga, says an audit conducted by the Cooperative Audit and Supervision Corporation in 2018/2019 uncovered the misappropriation of the funds from 4,413 audited Agricultural Marketing Co-operative Societies (AMCOS) across the country.
Tanzanian authorities have ordered officials with cooperative unions to repay $54 million that were released for buying crops from farmers but disappeared through negligence and misappropriation.
Acting Director-General of the Tanzanian Corruption Bureau, John Mbungo Hasunga says:
“Officials who swindled the money should start repaying before appropriate measures are taken against them.”
On October 20, Tanzanian President, John Magufuli announced that the country’s anti-corruption watchdog arrested 92 officials with cooperative unions for defrauding cashew nuts farmers in the country’s southern region to the tune of $522,000.
About $110,918 of this amount has been recovered.
During his working visit to the Mtwara and Lindi regions in October, President Magufuli was told by cashew nuts farmers that they were yet to be paid after they had sold the cash crop to cooperative unions since 2016 despite the fact that the government had released money for buying the crop.
Magufuli has ordered the country’s Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB) to launch investigations into claims by the farmers.