What if you’re found with ‘skin of a stolen animal’?

It involved Chadema national chairman Freeman Mbowe and his three co-accused in the High Court of Tanzania (Corruption and Economic Crimes Division) in Dar es Salaam this year.

However, the accused were released after the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) entered nolleprosequi on behalf of the Republic.

Although there are many lessons we could have learned from the case, we just mentioned a few of them because it was impossible to cover them all. Nevertheless, one conspicuous area had to do with the knowledge and use of the Police General Orders (PGO), especially during investigation, arrests, interrogation and taking statements of criminal suspects, thanks to cross-examination. 

The PGO referred to above is a 747-page document (English version) or a 764-page document (Kiswahili version), whose volume may put you off even before reading it. Yet, it is a useful instrument to all members of the Police Force in their duties. With this in mind it suffices to say that there is need for improvement in criminal justice processes.

Today, I invite you to look at a different issue which you might be familiar with, but you might as well not have taken the trouble to think of whether it has any legal consequences for you or not (with or without the fault of your own).

It is about being found with stolen property – not necessarily that you stole it, but because you bought it from a vendor who had stolen it or who had bought it from a person who stole it.

Of course, there is no worry if you know you have never stolen anything or you have never knowingly bought any stolen property. But there are circumstances, which if you knew the consequences, you could have been more careful!

Just imagine if you are found with stolen property, but at the time of getting it you had no reason to believe or there was no way you could have discovered it had been stolen, how long will it take for you to be exonerated from responsibility?

You might be familiar with the work of vendors as they travel from place to place, selling various goods. Sometimes when you are in a vehicle and you are in a traffic jam or even when you are walking some vendors might come to show you that they are selling clothes, shoes and other goods.

One or two vendors may be selling watches and mobile phones. They just show you when they are near you, otherwise they keep them hidden.

Suppose a vendor is selling a mobile phone at a very cheap price you can afford and you are tempted to buy it because you need it! Now after buying it you may go home and start using it.

Suppose there is a person who had his or her mobile phone stolen and went to report it to the police who started tracing it and found it with you.

Or suppose the vendor who sold it to you happened to be arrested and during interrogation he or she said to have sold the mobile phone to you and was able to identify you and you were arrested. What will you do to make the police believe you are not part of a criminal network?

Possibly, the police may want you to show them a receipt of which you don’t have because normally vendors don’t issue receipts to buyers.

But if you don’t have a receipt and you are among the suspects who have been traced by the police, what will you do to prove that you didn’t steal it or you didn’t buy the property you knew had been stolen?

You may recall a famous Kiswahili saying “akutwayenangozindiyemwizi” [the one found with the skin of (a stolen) animal is the thief] and this is what people generally believe. So, what can you do in such a circumstance?

Theft is defined as the act of taking another person’s property without his or her consent/permission with the intention of permanently depriving him or her of such property.

According to Section 258(1) of the Penal Code (Chapter 16, R.E. 2019), “A person who fraudulently and without claim of right takes anything capable of being stolen, or fraudulently converts to the use of any person other than the general or special owner thereof anything capable of being stolen, steals that thing.”

Fraudulent taking of anything capable of being stolen [see Subsection (2)(d) and (e)] includes “an intent to deal with it in such a manner that it cannot be returned to the owner in the condition in which it was at the time of taking or converting it or in the case of money, an intent to use it at the will of the person who takes or converts it, although he or she may intend afterwards to repay what has been stolen”.

Receiving or retaining stolen property is covered in Section 311. Subsection (1) states that ‘any person who receives or retains any property, knowing or having reason to believe it to have been stolen, extorted, wrongfully or unlawfully taken, obtained, converted or disposed of, is guilty of an offence and is liable to imprisonment for ten years’.

The case of IddiWaziri v R [1961] E.A provides some factors that establish the accused person knew the property he or she bought was stolen. One of those factors is a person selling a commodity or product “very much below the market price”.

This, according to the court, “is sometimes an indication of guilty knowledge in the buyer…[and] tends to indicate inferentially that the latter person himself [or herself] has acquired it illicitly and had guilty knowledge.”

In another case decided in 1970 six accused persons, who were appellants in the case, were charged with receiving and retaining stolen property and were accordingly convicted of those offences.

This should alert us that when we meet people selling TV sets, watches, mobile phones, laptop or desktop computers and other goods at very low prices we should be careful lest we find ourselves in trouble (with or without the fault of our own). So, take care!

Today’s proverb: “Fortune favours fools.”

The author is a lawyer based in Dar es Salaam. He can be reached at [email protected]