Zinara trio in forex scam
By Fungai Lupande
Three Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA) bosses appeared in court yesterday charged with illegally sourcing foreign currency on the pretext of servicing a $206 million loan for the rehabilitation of the Plum- tree-Mutare Road.
It is alleged that the trio also transferred close to $3 million to fraudulent local companies purporting that they were helping in repaying the loan.
Accountant Stephen Matute (46), regional engineer Givemore Tendai Kufa (34) and human resources manager Precious Murove appeared before Harare magistrate Ms Josephine Sande.
They are facing criminal abuse of duty charges as public officers.
They were remanded on $200 bail each. Ms Sande ordered the trio to surrender their passports, report every Friday at the CID Commercial Crimes Unit and to reside at their respective addresses.
The complainant in the matter is ZINARA represented by its chief executive officer, Engineer Nancy Musiyiwa.
Prosecutor Mr Sebastian Mutizirwa is alleging that in 2011 the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) advanced a 10-year loan of $206 million to ZINARA.
The loan facility was for the construction and rehabilitation of the 823km Plumtree-Mutare highway.
The court heard that the money was released through Infralink (Pvt) Limited, a subsidiary of ZINARA, and Group Five (Pvt) Limited.
It is alleged that the subsidiary was created to manage the road rehabilitation fund.
NMB Bank was nominated by DBSA to facilitate the loan repayment on a quarterly basis.
All the hard cash realised by ZINARA was deposited into NMB for further remittance to DBSA.
The court heard that due to foreign currency challenges in the country ZINARA mostly remitted bond notes to NMB leaving the bank to source hard currency on their behalf.
It is alleged that between May 3 and 23 this year the trio connived with ZINARA’s finance director and finance manager, who are already on remand, to source foreign currency from the parallel market.
The accused allegedly paid Access Finance (Pvt) Limited, Caudless Trading (Pvt) Limited and Grayriver (Pvt) Limited about $2 940 558,69 purporting that the companies had paid $2 194 425,93 to DBSA on behalf of ZINARA.
The offence came to light when CBZ Bank security department received information that one of the companies, Grayriver – which had received a transfer of $300 000 – was a fictitious entity.
It is alleged that the accused illegally sourced from the informal sector despite the fact that NMB was tasked to officially source the funds. The Herald
