Manager in court over ghost workers
Yeukai Karengezeka
Court Correspondent
A human resources manager with a Harare company Tinashe Madzima, who is accused of creating fictitious employee accounts to defraud three microfinance companies, appeared in court on Tuesday facing fraud charges.
Madzima appeared before Harare magistrate Mr Norman Banda, who released him on US$300 bail.
According to the prosecutor, Mr Rufaro Chonzi, Madzima approached his employer, Livetouch Investments Private Limited, with a proposal to provide loans to workers through microfinance companies.
While the company agreed to the idea, Madzima allegedly went rogue and created eight ghost workers to defraud Probfix Financial Services.
Madzima also went to Mountfin Finance and Ergoflex Finance, microfinance companies and successfully applied for loans for the eight ghost workers using the same documents.
On July 9, the court also heard that Madzima allegedly drafted a fake board resolution and memorandum of understanding documents, copying signatures from the company’s board chairperson Feng Wang and chief executive Dongning Wang without their knowledge.
He also created a fake date stamp to authenticate the documents.
Madzima successfully applied for loans for the 18 legitimate workers of the company and pocketed the money.
The scam was uncovered on October 11 when microfinance companies contacted Livetouch Investments about loan repayments for the ghost workers.
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