Nhau News Online News that is accurate, reliable, trustworthy!!
Four directors of Savanna Land Developers who swindled Government of over ZWL2 million have been granted bail by the Harare Magistrates Court.
The quartet was hauled before the courts on Saturday in their personal capacities after spending the funds which were erroneously transferred to their entity’s bank account by the Salary Service Bureau (SSB).
Garikai Chikono, Tipei Chipato, Elliott Mukuze and Solomon Kamhote appeared before regional magistrate Ngoni Nduna on allegations of stealing ZWL2 597 544.97 from SSB and were remanded in custody.
Nduna granted them ZWL15 000 bail each with conditions to report at CID Police Anti-Corruption unit (PACU) every last Friday of each month.
They were ordered to return to court for routine remand on 20 November, 2020. Nduna also warned them not to interfere with witnesses and ordered that they reside at their given addresses.
The State led by George Manokore alleged that sometime in June this year during the processing of the civil service payroll re-run, SSB mistakenly transferred the funds into the land developers FBC account.
The large chunk of funds were supposed to be transferred to FBC Microplan Finance (Pvt) Ltd while Savanna was only meant to receive ZWL3 980.
It is alleged that after receiving the funds and acting in common purpose, Chikono and Chipato as signatories to their FBC account, made 25 debit transactions of varied amounts mainly through internet banking from the company account leaving it with Z$88 047.12 out of the funds transferred from SSB.
SSB engaged them and they promised to transfer the funds back.
However, on 14 July they transferred about Z$856 207.1 to the SSB account and never reimbursed the outstanding amount prompting SSB to make a police report leading to their arrest. Nhau/Indaba
