UZ battling to recover $5 million from Gono

By Fortune Tazvida

The University of Zimbabwe is battling to recover nearly US$5 million in research funds looted from its foreign currency account by Central Bank governor Gideon Gono.

Gono the blue-eyed boy of the Mugabe regime raided private foreign accounts at the height of the economic crisis in Zimbabwe and used the money to prop up Mugabe’s iron fisted rule even after the dictator lost the elections in 2008.

Lecturers at the University of Zimbabwe sourced US$4,71 million from donors to fund research activities. Gono however had other designs for the money and diverted it to fund the repressive state machinery.

Gono who boasts that he is the single biggest chicken farmer in the country was the financier behind the notorious Joint Operations Command (JOC) that oversaw the murder of hundreds of opposition supporters in the aftermath of the March elections in 2008.

JOC was led by the brutal Defence Minister Emerson Mnangagwa who has a long history of lynching political opponents especially during his tenure as State Security Minister.

Gono was a member of the JOC which included the likes of Army General’s Constantine Chiwenga, Philip Sibanda, Air Marshall Perence Shiri, Prisons Chief Paradzai Zimondi, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri and CIO chief Happyton Bonyongwe.

It was always clear from the line up that Gono was there to provide funding for the operations.

One year after a power sharing government was installed the UZ money has still not been returned and Mugabe remains adamant Gono will not be relieved of his duties. Nehanda Radio

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