‘Probe ZACC payments’ Goodson Nguni
Goodson Nguni

Goodson Nguni

Sports Reporter
GOODSON Nguni, the Federation of Non-Governmental Organisations president, believes investigations into the controversial payments handed out by Zifa to Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission officials who were investigating the Asiagate scam should be conducted by police.
ZACC have announced they are conducting an internal inquiry but Nguni feels the probe should be done by the police.
ZAAC officials, Emmanuel Chimwanda and Courage Nyamajiwa, were handed payments by Zifa, from money borrowed from the association’s president Cuthbert Dube’s company, Buymore Investments, for their roles in the investigation of Asiagate.

Chimwanda, who was a member of the Ethics Committee, was paid US$20 000, in three separate payments, at a time when ZAAC was conducting its investigations into Asiagate. Nyamajiwa, who was the ZAAC investigator into the scam, was paid US$1 500 with the payment listed as having been made for “Asiagate witness, accommodation and allowances.”

Yesterday, Nguni said it was improper for Zifa, who were the complainants in the case, to also pay ZACC officials who should have been investigating the case independently with resources provided by the government for that.

“ZAAC have said they are investigating the case but I feel they cannot investigate themselves, such an investigation should be done by another organisation and I feel that the police are the people who are best equipped to conduct such an investigation,” said Nguni, who took ZAAC to the High Court challenging their powers to arrest people.

“There is a possibility that there could have been a criminal abuse of office from a ZAAC perspective and also from a Zifa perspective and when one looks at this case, it’s not difficult to see the corruption that colours it.

“Chimwanda’s case, as a senior official of ZAAC, is very interesting because he was being paid very huge sums by Zifa, money which the association didn’t have and had to borrow, and he was also being paid by ZAAC for dealing with the same case which to me sounds like double dipping.

“A man in his position, once Zifa brought their complaint to his organisation, should have recused himself from the Ethics Committee because his independence and neutrality, which are key when handling such cases, became questionable in a situation where he was receiving quite a fortune from Zifa.

“Because of the huge payments that he was getting from Zifa, one can conclude that it became impossible for Chimwanda to play the supervisory role we expected from him to do with his junior officials like Nyamajiwa because they were all eating from the same plate.

“In a situation where a person was arrested by the same ZACC officials, tried and then found not guilty, it’s not a wild suggestion for one to assume, in the wake of reports that have emerged of the big payments that were being made, that Zifa and ZACC’s relationship was compromised to ensure that a certain outcome was arrived at.

“For an organisation that should be at the forefront of fighting graft, the picture that has been coming out of their relationship with Zifa isn’t a good one and it dilutes the public’s confidence in them to be an organisation that they can trust.”

Nguni said his organisation was in the process of preparing its papers to take the Sports Commission to court for violating the Sport and Recreation Act.
“The SRC Act, which is part of the laws of this country, says that any association that doesn’t submit its audited financial statements every year should be de-registered and we have seen an association like Zifa going for years without presenting its audited financials while the Sports Commission can only watch all this happen.

“We are taking them to court because we cannot just watch while our national game is mismanaged, the Under-17s and Under-20s fail to fulfil their international assignments and it’s business as usual.”

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