'No basis for spurious allegations of illegal operations'

Spurious allegations that SA-based Bridge Shipping was illegally undertaking clearing and forwarding business in Tanzania have faded into the background, following the presentation of documentary proof to the contrary. According to Taryn Janse Van Rensburg, legal officer of Bridge in Johannesburg, the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), which has been investigating the issue, called at Bridge offices in the port city of Dar es Salaam the previous week. But once they were shown documentary proof that Bridge was a licensed freight forwarder in Tanzania and that it subcontracted clearing services to a local Tanzanian clearing agent registered with TRA, the officers departed. “Since then, we haven’t heard another word from them,” Van Rensburg said. When questioned about the source of these allegations, she suggested that they were likely to have been cast as an attempted business slur by an opposition company, or were a tale spun by a disgruntled ex-employee. The first notice of these accusations came about when the Bridge office in Dar was visited by a man who claimed to be a journalist investigating the issue, and who demanded answers to a “whole list of questions about our operational background”, Janse van Rensburg told FTW. “But he wouldn’t produce proof of his ID, so we refused to answer his queries.” At Dar es Salaam port, the company’s main focus is on cargoes transiting the port to and from the landlocked states of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Malawi, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. It offers warehousing, port forwarding, transport and fumigation services, mainly for commodities such as minerals, metals, cotton and tobacco.