Public prosecutors have charged Yigezu Daba, former director general of the Public Procurement & Property Disposal Service, and nine defendants, accusing them of high crimes of corruption involving nearly 700 million Br.

Filed on May 2, 2019, at the First Criminal Bench of Lideta High Court, the charge states that the defendants have allegedly caused the loss of public funds in the procurement of four million quintals of milling wheat. Nine of the defendants are from the Service, while one of them, Mengistu Kebede, is from the Ethiopian Trading Businesses Corporation.

Arrested on April 11, 2019, the defendants first appeared before the Court the next day, when police asked for an additional 14-day extension while they finalise their investigations and hand over the case to prosecutors. During the second court session, prosecutors filed charges against them.

The charge that was filed last week says that the defendants allegedly caused the government to incur 24 million in losses 2017 and 2018 during a tender process involving Promising International.

The prosecutors also allege that the defendants caused supply shortages of wheat by delaying the procurement process and canceling the bid three times.

In the first attempt, the defendants cancelled the contract with Shakeel & Company, a Pakistani company that initially offered the lowest price, stating that the company did not submit a guarantee bond, according to the charge.

"Shakeel & Company couldn’t bring [a] bank guarantee as the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia declined to provide the guarantee stating that the Bank does not have a cooperation agreement with banks in Pakistan," reads the charge.

The charge adds that the Pakistani company has asked for a 15-day extension to bring the guarantee from other banks and start the shipment of the wheat in the meantime. But the defendants cancelled the bid offer and re-floated the tender.

Promising was disqualified at the second offer for failing to include the shipment price of Ethiopian Shipping & Logistics Services Enterprise in its bid document. The second was cancelled in its entirety following an objection by Solomon Betre, former director of the procurement directorate at the Service, who disagreed about the exclusion of Promising from the bidding process.

This requirement follows a directive that was issued by the Office of the Prime Minister that ordered all shipments of wheat must be made on Ethiopian registered vessels to save foreign currency.