The government of Tanzania says it has begun legal proceedings to recover millions of dollars it claims a UK contractor received for building a road, but then disappeared without doing the work
Chief executive of the Tanzania Roads Agency Patrick Mfugale told reporters that the UK contractor STRADA International was hired in 2013 to build the 26km road from Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA) to the gem mines of Mirerani, but that the company had ‘disappeared’ with more than 22 billion Tanzania shillings – around £7.2m at today’s exchange rate.
Mfugale said: “Soon after signing the contract in 2013, STRADA simply disappeared a year later in 2014 … and we’ve since filed a court case against the firm … all we want is our money back.”
According to Daily News, the contractor had not even begun work on the road.
Companies House in the UK has just one company registered in that name.
Strada International Building & Civil Engineers Ltd was incorporated in February 2011 with an address in Middlesex, England.
An annual return filed in 2012 lists four directors, three of them British and one a Tanzanian national with a service address in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
In 2015 Mfugale’s agency hired a Chinese contractor, China Henan International Cooperation Group, which managed to build the road at a cost of 32.2 billion shillings (~£10.6m), supervised by LEA International Engineering of Canada, and in association with a local firm known as DOCH Tanzania.
Following the long delay of the road, the historic first paved road in the Simanjiro District has opened this week.
