The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) is
investigating possible abuse of funds under the controversial command
agriculture scheme amid claims that there are no records of how close to US$3
billion was disbursed.
One of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s advisors and ally,
Kuda Tagwirei, was heavily involved in the scheme that started in 2016 as his
company Sakunda was the financier.
The Agriculture ministry on Friday told Parliament’s public
accounts committee chaired by former Finance minister Tendai Biti that they had
no idea how US$2,9
billion disbursed for command agriculture was utilised.
Zacc chairperson Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo told The
Standard that Zacc had already opened an investigation into possible abuse of
funds meant for the scheme.
“We opened investigations into that matter (command
agriculture),” she said. “Generally, the report said there was abuse of resources
and this is what we are going to investigate.”
The government insists that lack of records does not
necessarily mean the funds were abused.
Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services permanent
secretary Nick Mangwana said the issue was not about misappropriation of funds. “On the 15th of July 2019, the Zacc boss Justice
Matanda-Moyo made it clear that all issues pertaining to command agriculture
will be investigated,” he said.
“At this point, we are dealing with accounting issues, not
issues of misappropriation of public funds unless you have more information
than I have.
“What came out in Parliament was that the appropriation of
the command agriculture funds was done through a different institution rather
than the ministry, which was expected to lead.”
The army was instrumental in the implementation of command
agriculture with Agriculture minister Perrance Shiri, who was Air Force
commander, leading the
programme.
Mangwana said the programme was a “special project”, hence
the non-involvement of the Agriculture ministry.
“Let us not forget that there are special projects, which
by their extraordinary nature are not run through the line ministry expected,
but other institutions of the state, which are also accountable to the public, so
unless the money is deemed missing, being administered through a different
account does not automatically spell corruption,” he said.
Shiri could not be reached for comment as he was not
picking up calls yesterday. Biti said it was worrying that the Agriculture ministry
could not account for nearly $3 billion.
“How do you pay $1,5 billion and $1,4 billion to a ministry
that knows nothing about these transactions?
“The permanent secretary and the finance director virtually
don’t know anything about the $1,5 and $1,4 billion, close to $3 billion,” he
said.
“You were innocent bystanders. The parent ministry for
command agriculture does not know anything about it. Someone must answer to
this.”
The Auditor General’s report of 2017-2018 showed the
Ministry of Lands could not account for an expenditure of close to $1 billion
dollars after the ministry
of finance had made direct payments to suppliers on their
behalf without providing details of the transactions.
Agriculture ministry’s finance director Peter Mudzamiri
told Biti’s committee that Treasury was responsible for disbursing funds to
ministries.
He said under command agriculture, treasury had not given
the money to the Agriculture ministry.
Mudzamiri said treasury later sent a letter to ministry
advising them to adopt an expenditure fee of US$847 954 752 in their accounts,
without providing
necessary documents .
“Treasury initiates the agreed budgets and it also has the
computer proof to upload the figures into the computer system,” he said.
“Once the figures are in the computer system and the budget
is released, that is when then we are able to spend. “In this particular case, nothing was released into our
system so the amount did not go through the ministry.”
“What we received later on was a single letter which was
saying we needed to adopt US$847 954 752 figure in our accounting records.
“We were complaining about this request to where treasury
directly made payments on our behalf and then asking us to adopt an
expenditure, which we might not
know about and especially without supporting documents.”
Mudzamiri said attempts to investigate the issue proved
futile.
“What we did as a ministry was to investigate this issue
and we even demanded to be given vouchers pertaining to these transactions from
the director of
budgets but because of pressure for the need to close the
financial period, we adopted this figure although we did so under protest,” he
said.
He said the system whereby treasury made payments on behalf
of ministries opened doors to fraudulent payments going unnoticed.
“The undertaking which we had from some of the officers in
treasury was that they will stop paying on our behalf in future and try by all
means to pay via your
board,” Mudzamiri said.
Biti said the committee would investigate the missing
funds.
“We are seriously concerned about breaches of the law and
budget and good governance,” he said.
In 2017, a leaked advisory note generated by the public
debt management office in the Finance ministry showed that the government was
aware that the facility
was open to abuse.
Some of the concerns raised in the advisory were that
“Sakunda have traded all the issued treasury bills in breach of the
non-tradability features on the TBs.
“In other words, the trading of the TBs by Sakunda plus the
repayments of the loan through both the Noczim Debt Redemption Fund and the
budget is tantamount to
Government funding the whole programme albeit, at a very
high cost,” the advisory note reads.
“Government should have traded its TBs directly to the
market without involving third parties.’
It also said; “there is potential conflict of interest,
lack of checks and balances and no competitive bidding, which is against good
corporate governance and
in violation of State Procurement Board regulations.
“For example, the financier is responsible for procurement
of all inputs and there is a huge risk of overpricing.” Standard
0 comments:
Post a Comment