Three Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) executives yesterday appeared at the Harare Magistrates’ Court facing allegations of criminal abuse of office after they allegedly fraudulently transferred more than $2,1 million into two bogus companies’ accounts in a shady loan repayment deal.
BY DESMOND CHINGARANDE
The trio – Stephen Matute (46), Givemore Tendai Kufa (34) and Precious Murove (44) – who are employed as accountant, regional engineer and director administration and human resources, respectively, were not asked to plead when they appeared before Harare provincial magistrate, Josephine Sande, who remanded them to August 8 on $200 bail each.
The accused joined their colleagues, Simon Mudzingwa Taranhike and Shadreck Matengabadza, who were remanded last week on fraud allegations emanating from the same matter.
Allegations are that sometime in 2011, Zinara was advanced a 10-year loan facility of $206 million by the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) for the construction and rehabilitation of the 823km-long Plumtree-Mutare Highway.
The loan was released through Infralink (Pvt) Ltd, a subsidiary company jointly owned by Zinara and Group Five (Pvt) Ltd, which was formed specifically as a special purpose vehicle to manage the fund.
Further, NMB Bank was nominated by DBSA to facilitate the loan repayment on a quarterly basis and all revenue in hard currency realised from Zinara’s operation was channelled to NMB Bank for onwards remittance to DBSA.
The State alleges due to foreign currency challenges, remittances to NMB Bank were being made in bond notes, leaving the bank with the task of sourcing hard currency on behalf of DBSA.
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It is the State’s case that from May 3 to 23 this year, Matute, Kufa, Murove, Taranhike and Matengabadza, acting in connivance and without authority from Zinara, allegedly sourced foreign currency from the parallel market through Access Finance (Pvt) Ltd and Grayriver (Pvt) Ltd directors, after paying them a total of $2,94 million on the pretext that the payment was a reimbursement to DBSA on behalf of Zinara’s part payment of loan obligation with DBSA.
The offence came to light after the CBZ Bank security department received an anonymous call that Grayriver, which had received $300 000, was a fraudulent company, used to syphon money from Zinara and the information was passed to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, which then made a report to the police.
Records provided to the police revealed that in May this year, the accused illegally sourced more than $2,94 million from the informal market, instead of using Zinara’s official source of foreign currency, NMB Bank.
Linda Gadzikwa appeared for the State.