Gifts and Facilitation Payments: What Act No. 11 of 2007 Bars

This page is the gifts, hospitality and solicitation operating file: what a company may give a public officer, what it may pay to move a file, and what it records either way. It is not a criminal defence brief, nor a substitute for the officer’s own code.

• Screening an intermediary: customer due diligence
• Who actually owns the counterparty: beneficial ownership
• Inheriting someone else’s history: acquisition diligence

As at 14 September 2026. The anti-corruption statute of 2007 governs, with the UK Bribery Act 2010 and the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act above it for foreign-parented groups; confirm the live text and reporting channels on pccb.go.tz.

What the 2007 Act prohibits, and which desk enforces it

Section 3 defines “advantage” far wider than most policies assume. Beyond a gift, loan, fee, reward or favour it names valuable consideration of any kind, a discount, commission, rebate, bonus, deduction or percentage, and employment or an agreement to provide it. A contract for a director’s cousin qualifies. So does an invoice quietly waived.

Section 15 makes the corrupt transaction an offence at both ends: the agent who solicits or accepts, and whoever offers or gives. Conviction carries a fine of not less than TZS 500,000 and not more than TZS 1,000,000, imprisonment of not less than three years and not more than five years, or both. Section 21 covers bribery of a foreign public official, so a Tanzanian company paying across a border stays inside the same law. Section 57 requires written consent from the Director of Public Prosecutions before proceedings are instituted, save for matters brought under section 15.

PCCB, TAKUKURU, investigates; the National Prosecutions Service owns the charge. Corruption is not a Union matter, and Cap. 329 does not run on the islands, where the mandate belongs to the Zanzibar Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Authority under separate legislation.

Why “facilitation payment” is not a legal category here

Tanzanian law sets no threshold below which an advantage stops being one, no carve-out for money that hurries what the officer already owed, and no defence that everyone at that counter pays. A TZS 20,000 note pushed across to move a file up the pile is section 15 conduct on both sides of the desk.

“Speed money” and “something for tea” are imported management vocabulary. The Act asks what passed and why, not how finance labelled it. Small and frequent is the easiest pattern to prove: one round sum, one site, the same week each month, against a description nobody will repeat under caution.

The foreign-parent overlay: Bribery Act 2010 and the FCPA

A group carrying on part of its business in the United Kingdom sits inside the Bribery Act 2010 wherever the conduct occurs. Section 1 covers giving, section 2 taking, section 6 the bribing of a foreign public official, and section 7 the corporate offence of failing to prevent bribery by an associated person: your clearing agent, licence consultant or joint-venture partner. The only answer to section 7 is its subsection (2) defence of adequate procedures, evidenced rather than asserted.

The United States differs in one respect. Its FCPA carries a narrow exception for facilitating or expediting payments for routine governmental action, alongside books-and-records and internal-controls duties binding on issuers. That exception limits American charging decisions and nothing else: the money still moved contrary to Cap. 329, the manager who paid is personally exposed, and calling it “consultancy” in the ledger creates a second, separate breach for the listed parent.

Lawful expediting, and the control-number test

Tanzania does sell speed lawfully: Immigration publishes tiered processing for travel documents, and several regulators run a priority scheme beside the ordinary one. A genuine expediting charge carries four marks: it appears in a published schedule or Government Notice; it is payable to the institution, never to a person; it produces a Government electronic Payment Gateway control number and a receipt in the company’s name; and it is booked at its true description.

On site, the control number is the whole test. If the counter cannot produce one, what is being asked for is not a fee, and a request to send funds to a personal mobile-money wallet ends the discussion.

The policy and the register the board signs

The statute sets no de minimis, so the company sets its own and lives inside it. Five decisions belong to the board: a per-head hospitality ceiling per occasion; an absolute bar on cash, airtime, fuel coupons and anything readily converted; a threshold above which compliance signs before money moves; a blackout on giving anything to an officer whose desk holds an open matter of yours: a tender under evaluation, an assessment in objection, an inspection report unsigned; and one named approver for exceptions.

The register proves the policy was real. One line per item, opened when the offer is made rather than when the invoice lands: date, the officer’s name, rank and institution, the desk and file reference, what moved in which direction, the TZS value, the approver, and what of yours was pending there. Gifts your own staff are offered belong in the same book, and a refusal is an entry too.

Papers this file needs

What a parent’s auditor, a bank’s financial-crime unit or a procurement reviewer will ask to see: the board-approved gifts and hospitality policy, version-dated; the delegation-of-authority schedule showing approval limits by value; the pre-approval form and the register; a third-party code carrying an anti-bribery clause, an audit right and a termination right; signed engagement letters for each clearing agent, licence consultant and land broker, naming scope and fee basis; BRELA extracts and beneficial-ownership records for those intermediaries; government receipts against each recharged disbursement; and a dated training attendance sheet.

One weakness recurs above all others: an agent’s invoice recharging a government charge must carry the receipt behind it. A lump sum for “official fees” is the line read aloud back to you.

Illustrative arithmetic: one inspection visit

A contractor hosts a four-person regulatory inspection at a site in Mkuranga. Hired transport, TZS 180,000. Lunch for seven, four officers and three of the contractor’s own staff, TZS 280,000, VAT inclusive. Four branded notebook sets at TZS 15,000, TZS 60,000. Total outlay TZS 520,000.

Attributed to the officers: transport TZS 180,000, four sevenths of the meal TZS 160,000, notebooks TZS 60,000. That makes TZS 400,000, or TZS 100,000 per officer: what the register carries and the ceiling is tested against, not gross spend.

Tax runs separately. VAT inside the restaurant bill at the standard 18% under the Value Added Tax Act, Cap. 148 is TZS 42,712, and input tax on entertainment is not creditable, so it stays a cost. Assume TRA disallows the full TZS 520,000 as entertainment under the Income Tax Act, Cap. 332: at the 30% resident corporate rate that costs TZS 156,000 in cash. Confirm the live schedule on tra.go.tz.

Set against that, TZS 300,000 handed over to shorten the same inspection buys no receipt, no reference number and no deduction, and exposes both the manager who paid and the company. Illustrative arithmetic, not a quotation.

When a payment is solicited: the sequence

1. Decline once, plainly, without argument or a promise to think it over.
2. Ask for the demand in writing: the requirement, the instrument behind it, the published charge, the control number.
3. Write the note that day: place, officer’s name and rank, desk, file reference, amount, words used.
4. Escalate internally at once, so the decision never rests with whoever is at the counter.
5. Climb the institution’s own ladder: supervising officer, head of station, then its complaints desk.
6. Report to PCCB, or the Authority for a Zanzibar site, if the demand repeats.
7. Notify the parent’s compliance function on the group’s deadline, not at the quarterly meeting.
8. Keep the pack together. A note written before anyone was accused separates a victim from a participant.

Where this file stalls

• The clearing agent at port or airport, where a policy drafted in London meets a charging structure nobody at head office has read.
• Petty cash carrying soft descriptions: “site expenses”, “protocol”, “courtesy”. What you would not say out loud in a hearing room does the damage.
• December. Hampers sent to institutional addresses, unlogged, chosen by an administrator with no value limit and no sight of open matters.
• Sponsorship. A seminar place holds up when the institution is invited formally and nominates its attendee; not when one officer is invited and the company books flights.

What has moved around this file

Procurement now carries the sharpest commercial consequence. A corrupt-practice finding travels to the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority, which maintains the list of debarred bidders, and exclusion from the tender pipeline costs a contractor far more than any criminal fine. Confirm the current procurement Act and regulations on ppra.go.tz.

The laundering overlay is the second layer. Proceeds of a corruption offence are criminal property under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, Cap. 423, and banks, advocates and accountants are reporting persons who file suspicious transaction reports with the Financial Intelligence Unit. Paying money and banking it are two exposures, not one.

The Whistleblower and Witness Protection Act, 2015 gives staff a route outside the company; an internal channel people trust costs less than one they step around.

Mandate-holders this file does not replace

PCCB investigates and may summon. The National Prosecutions Service decides charges and gives the section 57 consent. The Ethics Secretariat holds declarations made under the Public Leadership Code of Ethics Act, and each institution’s service code may forbid an officer from accepting what your policy permits: the officer’s rule governs the officer. TRA owns the deduction question, the Unit owns the report, PPRA owns debarment.

Zatra drafts the policy, builds the register, screens intermediaries and coordinates those desks. It does not practise law, prosecute or grant immunity. Where a summons or charge arrives, the matter goes to an advocate before anyone speaks to investigators.

What to confirm before you act

• Whether any officer you are about to host holds an open matter belonging to your company.
• The published charge and reference number behind everything an agent recharges.
• Whether a Zanzibar site is running a Mainland policy where both the enforcing Authority and the governing Act differ.
• The parent’s reporting deadline for a solicitation, settled before a site needs it.
• The live statute text from the Bureau’s and the Authority’s portals, not a law-firm summary.