Gono sets showdown with MPs over corrupt Mugabe cronies

Gono sets showdown with MPs over corrupt Mugabe cronies

GONO

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By Lebo Nkatazo

ZIMBABWE’S embattled central bank chief will appear before a parliamentary committee next Monday, ready to name senior government officials involved in corrupt financial deals.

Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono, returning from holiday in Asia, has faced criticism following nationwide cash shortages over Christmas and allegations that the central bank flooded the black market with trillions of dollars, despite the governor’s accusations that “cash barons” were hoarding the local currency.

Gono stunned President Robert Mugabe and gathered delegates to the Zanu PF extra-ordinary congress in December, saying he was ready to name corrupt government officials if invited by parliament.

He accused Mugabe's cronies of fuelling the country's runaway inflation through illicit financial dealings.

And in an interview later, he said: “It's true I know three quarters of those politicians involved in illegal activities. If challenged in circumstances that do not lend me in conflict with my ethics, I could tell the nation now.

"(However) I would be happy to name these people in a Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Budget and Finance. If they (Parliamentary Committee) have the guts, they can call me tomorrow, anytime, whether it is 6am, 12 noon or midnight and I would be happy to share with them and the nation. Let them call me and I will name these guys in the presence of the media.”

Gono, who said he had Mugabe’s backing, charged that the said officials were “getting away with murder.”

“Those that are working flat out to have them prosecuted are frustrated as these guys are either fined or let away,” Gono said.

Gono’s challenge to the parliamentary committee was immediately rejected by the committee’s chairman, Guruve MP David Butau, who fled the country for the UK soon after when police opened a corruption probe against him.

As parliament reconvened this week, Mackenzie Ncube, who is the budget and finance committee’s deputy chairman, said they had invited Gono to make his testimony next Monday.

Mackenzie said: “We agreed as a committee that the governor is granted the opportunity to talk next Monday. Remember since he gave his statement last year, he has not met us, so we are availing that opportunity to him.

“There is also the issue of the current cash crunch that is deepening on the transacting public, we want to know what the central bank is doing about that. What plan in place does the RBZ have on that?”

But Gono will face embarrassing questions after the Reserve Bank was accused of ruining a criminal prosecution by “tainting police evidence” when a former RBZ adviser, Jonathan Kadzura, was accused in court of trading Z$10 billion in brand news notes for United States dollars on the black market.

Police seized the money but the RBZ released it back into circulation without recording the serial numbers, effectively preventing any criminal probe into Kadzura.

Last week, a prosecutor called for the RBZ to be investigated, accusing officials of conspiring with a shelf company to spirit trillions of dollars out of the national fiscus.

A Harare man, Joseph Manjoro, pleaded guilty to trading Z$2,1 trillion on the thriving parallel market in breach of the country’s exchange control regulations.

In mitigation, Manjoro asked a Harare magistrate to consider his “special circumstances” after it emerged his company, Flatwater Investments, had received the money from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ).

The RBZ gave Flatwater Investments Z$7 trillion to import tractors from Michigan Tractors in South Africa for the country’s Farm Mechanisation Programme after the company submitted a letter claiming to possess US$9 million in an offshore account.

Flatwater, a Harare court heard, was a briefcase company with no capacity to undertake the job it was contracted for. The RBZ could have established this, prosecutor Tawanda Zvekare said, if they had requested more proof that Flatwater had the required financial resources.

Zvekare called for an investigation into financial impropriety “right up to the central bank”.

Zvekare blasted: "I find it incredulous that a whole central bank of a country would release trillions to a company on the strength of a mere letter, which was not verified. This marks of a conspiracy between the central bank and the company to steal all this money.

“Right from the RBZ to the lowest runner at Road Port, no mercy should be accorded to them. The court should give an order for thorough investigations right up to the central bank to avoid a situation whereby the courts would be only dealing with runners instead of cash barons and baronesses.”

Ncube said MPs would take Gono to task over the RBZ's alleged black market deals and flouting tender procedures.

He said: “There have been reports of people getting trillions of dollars from the RBZ, we want to know whether there were tenders floated. The committee wants to know how individuals ended up accessing those trillions and how were they accounted.”
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