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A lot of attention is given to corruption, and wiping this out, but this should not divert us from other crimes of theft and the need to stop these as well.

In yesterday’s edition of The Herald there were stories on two thefts from State-owned entities. A group of three NetOne staff plus a bulk airtime dealer and one of his staff had managed to steal airtime worth $565 999 964 and sell this, at a discount, to people wanting cheap airtime, and those numbers suggest a lot of people were ready to buy this cheap airtime.

This thieving has been going on since early last month, that is for eight weeks, and no one noticed with investigations only starting when a whistle-blower sounded the alarm, at both NetOne and the police.

Although it was obvious that there is an exploitable hole in the NetOne systems that allowed the theft in the first place, it is surprising that no one noticed this sort of theft, and $566 million is a lot of money, until the whistle-blower acted.

The second story involved three staff of the GMB at Hwange who stole 190 bags of fertiliser, but the theft was discovered very quickly and the three were arrested and 180 of the bags promptly recovered, just 10 having disappeared.

It is clear that the GMB might have a hole in their systems that allows a theft to take place, but that the back-up systems were good enough to notice that theft promptly and minimise the damage.

The ingenuity of the dishonest is almost limitless, so no matter how good a system looks someone might well be able to get round any barriers and steal.

This is a perennial challenge for those in business, especially like NetOne in business that involves the thief finding holes in software, a computer programme and computer security.

The arrest of the two groups involved in the two thefts is only half the required reaction. Both GMB and especially NetOne need to check out their own internal systems, those on paper and those in the software.

GMB, which at least can notice thefts very fast, probably have the least to two while it sounds as though NetOne will have to have a detailed examination of their whole software systems to find out how to plug holes, and find out if there are any more holes.

The private sector probably has just as high a percentage of potentially dishonest staff as the public sectors, but has developed a lot of techniques to make it more difficult for anyone to move off the straight and narrow and then catch those that do exercise their dishonesty as quickly as possible.

One major factor is audit, both internal and external, in much of the medium and large companies in the private sector.

This is very effective, the continual monitoring of transactions by the internal auditor checking out anything vaguely suspicious and the external audits looking at the systems as well as the transactions.

This sort of checking would probably have uncovered the NetOne theft earlier.

The sort of blocks of airtime being moved around, one of $203 million sent to a single number but many in the tens of millions, should have raised red flags early on.

We do not know how many transactions of this magnitude take place within the NetOne systems, but we doubt if there are that many considering the sums involved.

We suspect that in another company, someone in internal audit would be shown a list of very large transactions in real time and could investigate, and if there was something suspicious could then have action initiated to track down who was doing what. This is routine and is known to be a deterrent. A potential thief does not steal if there is a reasonable chance they will be caught.

What should be worrying the management of NetOne is that even after the whistle blower raised the alarm, the easiest way for both the police and the NetOne investigators to move forward was to track down the phone being used to distribute the stolen airtime, which was in the hands of the receiver of the stolen airtime, and then work backwards.

From all the warnings we get from our banks, it appears that total trust in software is unwise and that sensible humans are needed to defeat smart but dishonest humans.

The global banking sector has developed a lot of techniques for preventing hacking or abuse of its systems and keeps these up to date, learning from every one of the now very few successful hacks, but also looking at the attempts to get into their systems.

Others in the software business can obviously learn from the banking sector how to close software holes that allow the dishonest to reach the money.

The NetOne theft also shows the value of whistle blowers. There is legislation going through the systems to protect whistle blowers, and to protect them even if they make a mistake so long as it is not proved that this was a deliberate spreading of fake information.

The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission has made it clear that it regards this protective legislation as critical in its battle against corruption, since whistle blowers are so crucial to some of its work.

We would hope the legislation also protects those in organisations who blow the whistle against other crimes, from fraud and theft to sexual harassment and the like. It is not just in the present NetOne case that we see the value of someone who suspects telling the authorities.

Almost daily we publish a police crime report where the police ask public-spirited people who know something to “contact any nearest police station”.

This is important. The honest need to be active, and not just leave matters to ZACC or the police.

These groups are responsible for fighting crime, but often they need to know that a crime has taken place, and can usually speed up their investigations if someone who has seen something or heard something passes on the information. So it is right that they are then protected.

We also need to see all theft as theft, regardless of what precise charges are laid in court.

Corruption tends to be those thefts where someone with authority misuses that authority to steal, while theft from an employer is just stealing without being able to hide what is going on.

But in the end, regardless of whether it is the person at the top or the bottom, all stealing is                          theft.