This was said by Zacc chairperson Justice Loyce
Matanda-Moyo in a wide-ranging interview with the Zimbabwe Independent this
week, where she fired warning shots against those involved in corrupt
activities.
She said as at the end of last month, Zacc had finished
working on 32 dockets against a target of 60 dockets to reach an ambitious
target of 180 dockets by year-end. The list of alleged corrupt officials cannot
be released now, as this may jeopardise investigations.
“For those 32 completed dockets, we are very sure that the
accused persons will be convicted of corruption,” Matanda-Moyo said.
“Zacc set a target to refer 180 completed dockets to the
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) this year. This does not only put into
proper context the amount of work that the commission is doing, but also the
effort that we are willing to put in the fight against corruption. The target
for this year is twice what was achieved in 2020.
“Our target is 15 dockets per month meaning that we should
have submitted 60 dockets by the end of April 2021. However, we have a
shortfall of 28 dockets which was mainly caused by the closure of most
institutions due to the national Covid-19 lockdown restrictions.”
Some of the high-profile cases being handled by Zacc,
Matanda-Moyo said, include case number HCR109/12/20, involving a former
commissioner of police in charge of Matabeleland North Province, Erasmus
Makodza, who is being charged with criminal abuse of duty as a public officer.
Others include Rusape town secretary Solomon Gabaza, charged with criminal
abuse of office and Rusape councillor Clever Chimuse who faces similar charges.
The anti-graft body boss said there were several corruption
cases under investigation and arrests would be made once the probe was
complete.
“We have now resorted to sending completed dockets to the
Prosecutor General’s Office so that most of the time we proceed by way of
summons. The accused persons are summoned to court and tried. This we have done
so as to protect our witnesses,as well as to ensure that only deserving cases
appear before the courts and we do away with this catch-and-release phenomenon
associated with the anti-corruption drive,” Matanda-Moyo said.
Zacc is also carrying out spot-checks and systems
compliance at the Mines and Mining Development ministry and Umzingwane Rural
District Council (RDC). This comes amid reports of alleged corruption over the
handling of mining claims and grants by senior officials at the Mines ministry.
This was exposed by an investigative report which was produced by experts at
Zacc.
Recently, the commission assessed activities at the
Industry and Commerce ministry and Mutoko RDC.
Matanda-Moyo explained; “What Zacc does is that we examine
the practices, systems and procurement procedures in organisations to ensure
these systems and practices adhere to issues of good corporate governance and
prevent corruption. In instances where we find that there are no systems in
place, we assist that organisation in the formulation of proper systems that
prevent corruption.
“We have also created a dashboard as a monitoring tool for
the institutions. So after our compliance checks we put institutions into
categories red, orange and green. Red is for institutions with no systems or
those that have systems but are non-compliant, green for those with systems and
are implementing them and amber are institutions which are half way. We give
them an implementation matrix and a time frame in which to ensure that the
systems are in place.
“After the time frame we return to the institution to carry
out another compliance check to verify if they have complied with our
recommendations; if not we then bring in the criminal aspect into it. So this
year we are placing more emphasis on prevention rather than chasing after the
perpetrators. We will still investigate cases of corruption, however we want to
ensure there is a stop to these corrupt activities being committed by the
introduction of transparent systems.”
Matanda-Moyo said her office was also looking at reports
produced by the Auditor-General Mildred Chiri, which exposed rot in government
departments and parastatals.
Zacc is now engaging internal auditors from government
departments to implement recommendations made by Chiri to plug financial
leakages.
Chiri has over the years produced damning audit reports
which indict parastatals and ministries in financial malfeasances.
Commenting on companies accused by the Reserve Bank of
Zimbabwe (RBZ) of abusing the foreign auction system, Matanda-Moyo said the
apex bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) was seized with the matter after
which it will formally refer the cases either to the Zacc or the police.
RBZ governor John Mangudya recently told the Zimbabwe
Independent that a dozen companies were suspended from the foreign auction
system over allegations of fuelling the black market.
The forex auction was introduced in June 2020 to arrest
runaway parallel market rates and so far close to US$1 billion has been
funnelled to companies through the formal system.
Matanda-Moyo said to deal with complex corruption cases,
Zacc had recruited 36 experts drawn from forensics, information communication
technology (ICT), financial intelligence, tax, finance and accounting and law.
“I have emphasised the need to continuously train and
capacitate Zacc officers with the requisite skills that are in tandem with
current corruption trends. I am, therefore, happy to note that ongoing training
will be provided in the area of digital and financial investigations to sharpen
skills of the newly recruited officers.
“As part of our decentralisation drive of the fight against
corruption, we are also actively seeking to recruit 35 more investigating
officers to be deployed to provinces. These posts have been approved by
Treasury and we have already advertised the posts in various media outlets.
However, there is still the scope and the need to recruit more investigators as
the current pool is not adequate considering the rampant corrupt activities in
the country,” she said.
The Zacc chair said the Finance and Economic Development
ministry provided funds to acquire offices and vehicles although more resources
were required to meet the investigative needs.
“To lessen dependence on Treasury, we have proposed
retention of a certain percentage of assets that the commission would have
recovered to boost funding for our operations. This is a best practice noted
from other Anti-Corruption Agencies in other jurisdictions,” Matanda-Moyo said.
“We have made tremendous progress in terms of
decentralisation and have been given the green light to recruit and
decentralise in Masvingo, Mashonaland Central, Manicaland and Mashonaland West
provinces. These offices will be fully operational by June 1, 2021. Hence, we
are appealing for more resources in terms of human capital, furniture and
vehicles. Our objective is to have presence in every province and district in
the country beyond the current Harare, Bulawayo and Gweru.” Zimbabwe
Independent
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