The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) is steering
clear of a suspected multi-million illegal deal involving a new airline,
Zimbabwe Airways (ZimAirways), which is linked to former president Robert
Mugabe’s family, amid fresh evidence of lies by government officials and their
associates.
Government reportedly established ZimAirways six years ago
as a parallel airline to Air Zimbabwe (AirZim), a public enterprise that was
inherited from the colonial Rhodesian government at independence in 1980, but
has been facing severe financial and operational problems for more than a decade.
The new airline largely remained on paper through the
tenure of two transport ministers —Nicholas Goche and Obert Mpofu, respectively
— only to become a public controversy after the current minister, Joram Gumbo,
took over in 2015.
Gumbo’s anchor plan was to get ZimAirways operating as a
supplementary entity to AirZim under the guise that it was a private concern
and leasing planes to the national carrier to avoid seizure of its aircraft by
international institutions and groups of evicted white farmers who the
Zimbabwean government owes millions of dollars.
ZimAirways is renting offices at a property owned by
Gumbo’s niece, Mavis, in Gletwyn, a plush northern suburb in the capital.
There was an outcry over the lease of the property to
AirZim amid accusations of nepotism, but a bigger controversy surrounding the
airline has evolved around the purchase of four planes worth $70 million from
Malaysia with the direct involvement of Mugabe, who set off negotiations with
his Malaysian counterpart, Najib Razak, in 2016.
According to Gumbo, the used Boeing 777-200-ER planes,
which were purchased with the help of Mugabe’s son-in-law, Simba Chikore, a
pilot who was working as the AirZim chief operating officer at that time but
resigned late last year, were initially supposed to replenish the ailing
airline.
However, he claims, there was a change of plans after
realising that the planes would be seized on international flights, hence the
decision to re-route them to ZimAirways through another government entity, Zimbabwe
Aviation Leasing Company (Zalc) that was also reportedly set up in 2012.
At one time, Gumbo claimed the decommissioned planes were
bought for ZimAirways by a consortium of Zimbabweans living and working in the
diaspora, but of late, he and Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa are insisting
that they are government property belonging to the new entity, which they say
is also a public enterprise.
There have been loud calls from aviation experts,
politicians, civil society and citizens to investigate the deal amid suspicions
that the new airline was meant to benefit the Mugabe family and its close
associates prior to the November 2017 military coup that ushered in a new
administration led by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Investigations by The Standard, working in collaboration
with the Information for Development Trust (IDT), have unearthed a deliberate
plot by Gumbo and connected individuals to mislead the nation on the tenancy of
ZimAirways and Zalc
The minister denied any nepotism in the fact that his
niece, Mavis, is Zalc’s and ZimAirways’ landlord, claiming that the two went
through an estate agent in a manner that was above board.
“Mavis is my niece. She has her house and she wanted to
lease it out through estate agents. The ZimAirways guys stumbled on the house
without her or my knowledge and they liked it. It was a purely business deal,”
Gumbo told The Standard.
Mavis claimed in a brief interview that the two entities
got the lease through an estate agent called Letbill Realty, but checks
revealed that this was false.
Letbill Realty folded in 2017 upon the death of one of its
directors and a surviving co-director, Clemence Chidziva, confirmed this.
Chidziva dismissed claims that their now-defunct agency had
facilitated the lease of Mavis’s property to ZimAirways and Zalc.
The only time the real estate company had dealt with Mavis
was some years ago when she sought to sell a different property, but the deal
did not materialise.
“We closed the business and are not collecting any
management fees from any property as we speak,” Chidziva said.
“We briefly dealt with Mavis Gumbo many years ago when she
wanted to sell one of her properties along Enterprise Road (Harare). The deal
fell through and that’s all I remember.”
He said he had never dealt with ZimAirways or their
representatives in any way.
Mavis, who has been largely media-shy on the purported
lease agreement, refused to shed more light on the deal with ZimAirways and
Zalc.
Even though Gumbo says both ZimAirways and Zalc were formed
in 2012, the available paper trail shows that they were incorporated only last
year.
The ZimAirways file has mysteriously disappeared from the
Registrar of Companies’ records, but the CR14 company registration form
obtained during investigations lists three top civil servants and a local
lawyer as the directors.
They were appointed on January 18, 2017, according to the
document, some five years after the initial establishment of ZimAirways.
Andrew Ndaamunhu Bvumbe, who has since resigned, Angeline
Karonga (Transport ministry legal advisor), Mufaro Eric Gumbie (ministry
principal director) and Anne Farirayi Mutswiri, who works at Matsikidze and
Mucheche legal practitioners, are listed as directors of the company.
Intriguingly, Mutswiri said she had no idea why she is listed as a director.
“That cannot be, I think it’s incorrect. If my name appears
it is possibly because we did some work for ZimAirways, but I do not work for
them,” she said.
Documents show that Matsikidze and Mucheche legal
practitioners presented ZimAirways’ papers for filling at the Companies
Registry.
More mystery surrounds the registration of Zalc.
The certificate of incorporation for Zalc numbered
4069/2017 shows that the company was registered by the Registrar of Companies
on June 22 last year.
Its directors are named as Phillipa Phillips, Phillips Law
and Dacyl-Ray Rambanepasi.
The first two’s given address is Suite 100, Sanlam Centre,
Newlands in Harare, while Rambanepasi’s is Number 6, Bray Close, Greystone
Park, Borrowdale in Harare.
Gumbo maintains that directors of both Zalc and ZimAirways
are government employees but the leasing company directors, like Mutswiri, are
private individuals.
According to a statement jointly issued by Chinamasa and
Gumbo recently, Air Zimbabwe approached the State Procurement Board (SPB)
seeking authority to purchase the four Boeing 777 second-hand planes.
“In November 2016, the SPB under BPR 1067B approved Air
Zimbabwe’s request to purchase the four Boeing 777 planes from Malaysia.
“Government, through the ministry of Finance and Economic
Development, took a decision to secure funding for the procurement of the four
planes together with eight Embraer aircraft, which would be used as feeder
planes,” reads the statement.
However, the SPB approval of the purchase was a rubber
stamp.
In an interview, Gumbo indicated that the decision to buy
the planes was made hastily when his team travelled to Malaysia with Mugabe,
who was on his way to Singapore for treatment.
Mugabe, Gumbo said, engaged the Malaysian leader Razak and
introduced the transport minister.
At that stage, the Malaysian PM said they couldn’t enter into
a partnership with AirZim on whose behalf the Zimbabwean team was negotiating.
Instead, he offered to sell four decommissioned planes to
them, and the Zimbabwean delegation promptly took up the offer of $70 million.
The delegation negotiated with the London-based
PriceWaterhouseCoopers which was acting on behalf of the Malaysian government,
and the Zimbabwean team quickly wrote a letter of intent to buy the planes
after agreeing on the $70 million price.
That means Gumbo’s team returned home with a deal already
in the bag and processes that followed were mere formalities, in violation of
tendering regulations.
Former Transport secretary Munesu Munodawafa was excluded
from the Malaysian deal under unclear circumstances.
“I was never involved in any negotiations with Malaysia
Airlines (the owners of the planes). Beyond that, I have no comment,” he said.
Instead, Gumbo jointly signed the deal with former Mines
minister Walter Chidakwa.
It was not clear how Chidakwa, who was removed from his
post after Mugabe’s forced exit, got involved in the deal.
He is closely related to Grace Mugabe, the ex-first lady,
through marriage.
Gumbo, on the other hand, is related to Mugabe’s late
mother, Bona.
He has been linked to Mnangagwa, but, according to sources,
has also maintained close ties with Mugabe, and Chikore is reported to be a
regular visitor at his office.
Gumbo’s close involvement in operational issues at
ZimAirways has generated discomfort among his critics.
He described himself as a “consultant” in the deal, but was
quick to point out that, like Chikore, he did not receive extra payment for his
role.
The SPB has been replaced by the Procurement Regulatory
Authority of Zimbabwe after recurrent complaints of corruption over the years.
Its acting CEO Nyasha Chizu, in response to questions from
The Standard, defended the Boeing purchase deal, which he said was done in
accordance with the repealed Procurement Regulations Statutory Instrument 171
of 2002.
“Any direct procurement required that the accounting
officer be cleared by the State Procurement Board before contract.
“As reported in other media, it is a fact that the
procurement of 4 x Boeing 777s was cleared by the State Procurement Board at
their meeting No. 84 of 2016 on 17 November 2016,” he said.
“The accounting officer, before the clearance, was
requested to clarify issues relating to costs, life span and spare parts.
“The submission by the accounting officer was then found to
be reasonable by the State Procurement Board.”
The request for the purchase of planes involved the
ministry and Air Zimbabwe, he said, but did not shed light on whether the SPB
requested for information on other suitors for a fair award of the tender or
whether it was being treated as a special case.
He admitted that the SPB was “not privy to the finer
details of the agreement of sale” with Air Malaysia, since “the role of the SPB
back then was limited to the award of contracts”.
While Chikore did not avail himself for an interview
despite numerous attempts. he is on record saying he did not benefit personally
from the ZimAirways deal.
Gumbo told The Standard that he advised Chikore to resign
from his post at AirZim in September 2017 in order to take up more roles in
setting up ZimAirways.
Chikore raised eyebrows recently when he flew in the first
Boeing 777 bought from Malaysia and registered as Z-RGM as a full pilot even
though aviation experts maintain he is still junior.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe [RBZ] governor John Mangudya added
more confusion to the unfolding mystery regarding the purchase of the planes.
Gumbo, who has revealed that Mangudya is the ZimAirways
trustee, is on record saying the governor directly facilitated payment of at
least $45 million for the four Boeings.
However, Mangudya said: “The RBZ does not process
commercial transactions. You may, therefore, wish to contact the relevant
authorities or the sources of your information for the details that you need on
your inquiry.”
Gumbo shockingly claimed that, by 2016, government had
removed AirZim from its books and replaced it with ZimAirways.
“According to government books, there was no longer Air
Zimbabwe. Instead there was ZimAirways.”
Contrary to that, AirZim has never ceased to operate,
constantly flying Mugabe and other officials to regional and international
destinations in addition to servicing domestic routes.
Former finance minister Tendai Biti said the ZimAirways
deals might have breached a litany of the country’s procurement regulations and
laws as well as the constitution.
“We never saw any advertisement to the effect that Air
Zimbabwe wanted to lease any planes and the government never invited bids for
the lease of the planes, but the procurement regulations require that,” he
said.
“If it is correct that government made a payment for the
planes, then Parliament needed to be involved.
“All government payments are from the Consolidated Revenue
Fund whose custodian is the legislature and I do not think Parliament was ever
asked to approve this deal
“This means Gumbo is in breach of sections 303, 304 and 305
of the constitution relating to state expenditure.
“Government could seek condonation from Parliament under
section 307 of the constitution, but this has not happened either.”
Biti called on Parliament to investigate the deal, but the
legislature has been folding its arms.
Former parliamentary committee on transport chairperson
Dexter Nduna said the legislature had adopted a “wait-and-see attitude” over
the developing scandal.
Nduna was reportedly removed as chairperson after numerous
clashes with Gumbo over investigations by the committee in most parastatals
under the minister’s purview.
Zacc has decided to watch the unfolding scandal from the
terraces despite swelling allegations of nepotism, fraud and violation of
public procurement procedures.
“Zacc has not received any report with regard to the ZimAirways
(sic) and neither do we know of the existence of such a company.
“Zacc advises you to check with the Ministry of Transport
for more information,” said commission spokesperson Phylis Chikundura.
The constitution and the Anti-Corruption Commission Act,
however, do not limit Zacc to being a passive recipient of graft-related
reports.
Section 12 (a) of the Act provides that the commission
shall “monitor and examine the practices, systems and procurement procedures of
public and private institutions”,
while, under subsection (f), it must “investigate any
conduct of any person whom the commission has reason to believe is connected
with activities involving corruption”.
In the past, Zacc has avoided probing politically-sensitive
cases and stands accused of working on orders from the elite.
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