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Court Reporter

An employee of African Century Limited Bank processed $31 263 875 of bank money into his own accounts as failed Zimswitch and airtime transactions.

Calvin Mucharwei was not asked to plead to the charges when he appeared at the Harare Magistrates Court charged with fraud.

It is the State’s case that Mucharwei’s duties included reconciling Zimswitch and airtime transactions and preparing lists of reversals to be processed for failed transactions.

The court heard that on September 4 this year Mucharwei prepared a list of failed airtime transactions to be reversed and submitted it to the IT systems analyst, Mr Shelton Ndindana for processing.

But another employee, Mr Shelton Ndindana, became suspicious of one high value transaction of $700 000 to be reversed into Bonface Mukande’s account. He told financial accountant Mr Ben Chikuhwa who then investigated and established that it was not a valid failed airtime transaction.

It was also noted that Mukande’s account had received two invalid failed airtime transactions totalling $1 300 000, which had been processed on September 16.

It was then discovered that Mucharwei had submitted the invalid transactions on his list to the IT systems analyst and to branches and operations departments for processing and then further investigations found invalid Zimswitch failed transactions were processed through Itai Mucharwei’s account 65 times with different amounts between September 1 last year and June 30 this year.