Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission fails to account for US$1 million

The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC), an independent organisation that is supposed to fight graft has failed to avail to the Auditor-General Mildred Chiri, supporting documents in the form of invoices or supplier statements to validate expenditure and payables cumulatively amounting to US$1,017,130 476.

This was revealed by Chiri in her latest audit report for the year ended 31 December 2021. She said the anti-graft commission failed to present invoices or supplier statements to validate expenditure and payables amounting to US$762 654 and US$254 476 respectively.

“There were no supporting documents availed in the form of invoices or supplier statements to validate expenditure and payables amounting to US$762 654 and US$254 476 respectively presented in the financial statements,” she said.

“In addition, the Commission was unable to avail creditor’s reconciliations for the 2018 financial period. I was therefore unable to perform alternative procedures to obtain assurance as to the accuracy and completeness of these balances.”

Chiri further noted that, in terms of property, plant and equipment (PPE), ZACC in 2012 wrongly derecognised houses with a carrying amount of USD2 417 374.

She said the houses were donated by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and recognised in the Commission’s financial statements in 2010.

“In terms of the conceptual framework for financial reporting and IAS 16- ‘Property, plant and equipment’, the houses met the definition of assets as economic benefits were flowing to the Commission and it had the ability to direct how the houses could be used.

“However, contrary to IAS 16, the Commission derecognised the houses in 2012 due to delays in transfer of title.

“This therefore constituted an accounting error as all the requirements of IAS 16 for recognition had been met and the Commission had not corrected this accounting error in the financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2018 as required by IAS 8 “Accounting Policies, Changes in Accounting Estimates and Errors.”

“Had the error been corrected and the houses included in PPE, the financial statements could have been materially affected,” Chiri said.

ZACC spokesperson John Makamure was not immediately available for a comment during the time of writing, he simply said, “I will come back to you later”.