Prime Minister
Mizengo Pinda
%5B3%5D.jpg "Pinda(41)")
welcomes investors into the country, assuring them of the government determination to create conducive environment for doing business.
EIGHT POLICE OFFICERS ARMED WITH AK 47 MACHINE GUNS.
YEAH REALLY INVESTOR FRIENDLY MR. PINDA
BENJAMIN MENGI
States to investors in front of the above officers
'I am black, you are white and the police here are in my hands and will do nothing to protect you. I will spend my last chicken driving you from Tanzania cut to pieces in a coffin if necessary and send you back to Zimbabwe’.
This video shows some of the daily harassment of the investors by the police. The officers, armed with AK 47 machine guns, come to the farm and demand entry. They are asked what they want and to state what power under the penal Code of Tanzania, they have power to enter. They never state the later. Firstly they state they have come to the farm to investigate the theft of Mengi's cattle from the farm. Mengi and his wife, keep 120 cattle on the farm unlawfully. They use them to destroy the investors crops produced for export. the Mengi's are therefore guilty of criminal trespass and the police do nothing to stop the continuance of this serious criminal offence and situation. The cattle are used as a tool of harassment. The police are asked who the complainant is. They state Benjamin Mengi. The investors point out that he is in India. The police then change their story and state that the complainant is now Mengi's cattle staff (seen in the video on the left). The police are told that the cattle staff are trespassing on the farm, as are the cattle, that they do not own the cattle and therefore have no right of criminal complaint. The officer is asked what power he has to enter the farms. He refuses to state what power he is operating under. The officer then is just not sure why he is there and can clearly be heard to say 'maybe the complaint is theft of cattle'.
Tanzania, a country committed to good governance and an 'investor friendly' environment, savagely abused British Investor Stewart Middleton a bona fide investor in the country. Stewart Middleton, a bona fide investor in the agricultural sector in Tanzania purchased an assignment to the lease of Silverdale & Mbono Farms, in the Hai district of the Kilimanjaro region in May 2004 from Benjamin and Millie Mengi. Benjamin Mengi is brother to Media Tycoon Reginald Mengi who owns IPP Media in Tanzania. In April 2005, Mengi began negotiating with another British investor Konrad Legg; to sell the lease to him for a second time and he demanded that Middleton hand the farms back to him based on the fact that Mengi, despite having signed a full receipt, had not been paid in full. It had taken Mengi one year to make this allegation. Legg began negotiation with Kenyan firm Tropical Farm Management, to manage the coffee on Silverdale Farm. When Middleton refused to hand back the lease, Mengi, using the police and the judiciary and the Kyeri, Shari and Uswa/Mamba Co-operative societies, began a campaign of violence racist abuse and Zimbabwe style tactics to force the investor to leave Tanzania. The tactics were supported by the Moshi Police and the judiciary, In March 2006, the High Court in Moshi dismissed Mengi's claims to have the investors evicted from the farms but left the investors to pay $6,000 in costs. In November 2005, Mr. Middleton was arrested on the basis of charge sheets that were forged by the Moshi Police. The complainant was Benjamin Mengi. The charge sheets contained charges that do not exist under the Penal Code of Tanzania. In July 2006. Mr. Middleton was arrested again and imprisoned. This time on allegations of a civil nature carrying no power of arrest, that Mr. Middleton had breached a court order. The court order was forged and issued by Magistrate Temu from the Moshi Magistrates Court. The date on the order preceded the date for the hearing of the order. The first order was issued and not happy with that, Mengi applied for another order signed by another Magistrate. He then complained that Middleton had breached the order. Notwithstanding the order was forged and of a civil nature, it carried no power of arrest. Despite representations to Vincent Lyimo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Mr. Middleton was placed before the court late in the afternoon refused bail and sent to Karanga Prison in Moshi for four days and incarcerated outside the High Court in Moshi in a cage on the day of his release. The file went missing for two days so the court could not address the incarceration. On the day of his release, the prosecution attorney stated, that Mr. Middleton's incarceration had been a travesty of justice. The High Court judge stated that the Magistrate had not been free from bias and that there was no evidence to suggest Mr. Middleton had breached a court order. All charges were dropped y the Director of Public Prosecutions, but no apology has ever been given to Mr. Middleton by the Republic Tanzania who after four years continue to refuse to address the conduct of the courts and police to register Mr. Middleton's lease. IPP Media newspapers reported the arrests accusing Mr. Middleton of offences of dishonesty making no investigations into the authenticity of the documents and giving no right to reply.
In 2004, Benjamin and Millie Mengi assigned (through Fiona Tanzania Ltd) the lease to Silverdale & Mbono Farms in the Hai District of the Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania, to British investor Stewart Middleton Silverdale Tanzania Ltd). A year later Mengi tried to sell the lease again to British Investor Konrad Legg and demanded the lease back. Mengi stated in front of RCO Kighondo, that he would drive the investor and his with out of Tanzania cut up into pieces if necessary. Since that day, the investors have been harassed, imprisoned and faced with threats and violence and vexatious court proceedings. Mengi and his wife Millie Mengi refuse to remove their cattle and livestock from the farms and they persist in destroying export crops and are dying of disease. Mrs. Mengi took out a court case that the investors were killing the cattle albeit, Mengi is able to remove them at any point. This video shows Mengi's 'power of attorney' Anold Kimaro calling the Regional Crime Officer in Moshi to the farms where they are trespassing stating that Sarah Hermitage, is preventing them from carrying out their unlawful conduct on the farm and asking abusively for the police to come quickly. The police attended the farms with Benjamin Mengi. They did not insure that either Mengi or Kimaro left the farm.
Benjamin and Millie Mengi caused barbaric suffering to animals (whilst trespassing) and committed criminal damage and criminal trespass on Silverdale Farm. Government institutions failed to address any of the criminal conduct committed by the Mengi's in order to harass British investors who have now fled the country due to threats to their lives and the destruction of their investment.The Mengi's sold the lease to Silverdale & Mbono Farms (Fiona Tanzania Ltd) to British investor Stewart Middleton (Silverdale Tanzania Ltd) in 2004. After one year, Mengi began negotiating with Konrad Legg (Tudeley Estates) to sell the lease a second time. He demanded the lease back from the investors stating that he had not been paid in full despite, having signed a receipt that he had. When the investors refused Mengi stated he would drive them from the country by any means if necessary, cut them up into pieces with a Machete and send home in a coffin. A four year campaign of harassment and intimidation was then unleashed against the investors. This video shows one of the most disgusting elements of the harassment when, in order to drive the investors from the farms the Mengi’s left their dead cattle to fester and stink close to the investors house and failed to deal with the provisions of a quarantine order . This was done in order to harass them and not one member of any State institution has ever asked Mengi to account for his criminal conduct.The video shows the barbaric, savage and deliberate cruelty caused to the animals simply in order to harass the British investors. The police and the judiciary have overtly facilitated this criminal conduct by failing to arrest Mengi for criminal trespass, criminal damage and assault by keeping their animals on the farm unlawfully. Former Minister of Justice Mary Nagu instructed the investors not to remove the cattle from the farm. The Minister had no constitutional or legal basis for this instruction and is thus condoning at Ministerial level, abuse of the rule of law. Nagu stated in November 2007, that she wanted to resolve the issue in a manner that 'protected' the Mengi name. Mengi continues to commit serious offences of criminal trespass, burglary and assault by keeping the animals on the farm unlawfully. The police refuse to accept a criminal complaint against the Mengi's. After some 20 animals had died from foot and mouth disease, the police accepted a complaint from Mengi, that the investors had killed his cattle and issued a civil law suit for this and accusing the investors of forging a quarantine order.
Investor friendly!! What a bunch of Muppetts!!
By MASATO MASATO, 1st March 2011 @ 11:00, Total Comments: 0, Hits: 27
THE Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda on Tuesday welcomed investors into the country, assuring them of the government determination to create conducive environment fordoing business.
“We have made great strides in the economic front but still we have a lot of challenges ahead,” Premier Pinda told the Economist Tanzania Summit in Dar es Salaam. However, he acknowledged that poor infrastructure, unskilled human resource and erratic power supply were factors that impede doing business. He encouraged the private sector to effectively participate in the national development, citing agriculture, agro processing and mining as some of the country’s virgin sectors, yearning for investments.
The government focus, he said was on infrastructure development, investing heavily on human resource development and spearheading ICT for the country’s development. “We, in the government, believe firmly that well developed ICT will have far reaching impacts on almost all sectors of the economy.” Mr Pinda, describing himself as the peasant son, said the government was, through the ambitious Kilimo Kwanza initiative, determined to liberate majority Tanzanians out of abject poverty.
He said reforms were underway to address land related issues that impede commercial agriculture in the country. The reforms, according to the Premier, will cover financial sectors to allow speedy settlement of commercial disputes by the judiciary. “Tanzania boasts of robust financial system that allows banks to operate—and, banking remains one area that is open for investments.” Investors however decried power blackouts and poor infrastructure—roads, ports, railways and airports, which they said were making it difficult to trade in Tanzania. They blamed the persistent power crisis to politics, challenging the government to look for the lasting solution to rescue the economy from total collapse.
Infotech Investment Group Executive Director Ali Mufuruki put the loss suffered by the national economy due to power problems at one trillion, a month. Tanzania Revenue Authority, the government tax collection agency, has admitted to have lost over 800bn/- so far in uncollected revenues due to blackout.
Mr Mufuruki raised concern over the human resource problem in the country, saying: “Skills are a serious problem in Tanzania...I’m not exaggerating but we have university graduates who cannot express themselves in a few sentences, be it in English or Kiswahili.”
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