Two senior employees of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) are expected to appear in court next month facing charges of sending pornographic material to different people using their office computers.

The pair, Joseline Dube and Brighton Matingo, of Harare and Bulawayo respectively, have not been formally charged with contravening Section 26 (1)(b) Censorship and Entertainment Act, Chapter 10.04 (possession of prohibited articles). They are expected to appear for trial on July 12 before Bulawayo magistrate Gideon Ruvetsa.

Their trial was supposed to start last Thursday but failed to kick off because their lawyer, Ralph Maganga, had not been served them with papers to prepare for trial.

They are both out of custody on $100 bail. They were ordered to report to Criminal Investigation Department Fraud section, reside at their given address and not to interfere with witnesses.

Charges against the pair are that in October last year, Zimra’s information technology department discovered that their computer system was being overloaded and was slow, affecting the revenue authority’s service delivery.

They started monitoring the computer system using Riverbed Appliance System which is a traffic monitoring and acceleration utility and discovered that the pair had for eight months been using the parastatal’s system to send pornographic mails to various people.

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The material was taken to the Censorship Board under regulation BC4/56, which confirmed that the material was indecent, obscene, offensive and undesirable and should be banned.

Dube and Matingo were then arrested.