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Jonathan Mashingaidze

Eddie Chikamhi Senior Sports Reporter
ZIFA have lived up to their threat of litigation against their former chief executive Jonathan Mashingaidze with the association formally lodging a report with the police who have since opened a docket for the alleged $700 000 fraud.

Mashingaidze was last week also slammed with a life ban that is now awaiting approval of the ZIFA congress.

The soccer mother body were guided by the findings of an audit report compiled by Baker Tilly Gwatidzo Chartered Accountants on the consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 2011, when they made their report.

ZIFA president Philip Chiyangwa yesterday said they have decided to raise criminal charges against their former employee and the case was reported under RRB 3370099.

The report by the auditors indicated Mashingaidze as head of the association’s secretariat could not account for money in excess of $700 000.

“Basically what we have done is that we have reported him to the police and a docket has been opened. So police are after Mashingaidze now. These are matters that have been outstanding for some time.

“This man should have answered for his sins long back. When we came in we felt we could not continue to work with him after discovering his shenanigans, hence his contract was not renewed.

“An audit that was done by the association’s auditors in 2011, long before we came in, is clear that some criminal activities were happening at ZIFA and we wonder why people were not brought to book. This Mashingaidze abused his office to block the matters from coming to the fore.

“There was no Congress of note between 2010 and 2014 and this paralysis of leadership helped him get away with it. But now it’s time he owns up,” said Chiyangwa.

The independent auditors Baker Tilly Gwatidzo Chartered Accountants who were tasked to look into the association’s books in 2011 produced an adverse report in which they also pointed out that the association was technically insolvent.

In essence, ZIFA were operating illegally since then because the costs of liabilities far outweighed the value of its assets.

ZIFA’s debts ballooned from $600 000 to $6m inside five years with Mashingaidze at the helm and it is alleged that the previous leadership committed fraudulent transactions which included creation of non-existent debts, inflation of figures and signing fake acknowledgement of debts.

“Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these consolidated financial statements based on our audit. We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing.

“Those standards require that we comply with ethical requirements and plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance whether the consolidated financial statements are free from misstatement.

“We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our adverse audit opinion,” read part of the report.

The auditors also noted with concern that huge amounts of money were not accounted for and that ZIFA did not comply with the basic audit requirements.

“The financial statements have not been prepared on the accrual basis of accounting as per the requirements of International Accounting Standard 1. This represents a material non-compliance with a fundamental principle of accounting. The effect thereof on the financial statements cannot be quantified.

“Included in the consolidated financial statements are direct match expenses amounting to $1,291,636 and operating expenses amounting to $2,375.33. However, we were not able to obtain appropriate and sufficient audit evidence amounting to $41,215 and $99, 648 respectively due to unavailability of either adequate supporting documentation or confirmations from third parties.

“Consequently we were not able to determine whether any adjustments to the consolidated financial statements were necessary.

“We were not able to obtain appropriate audit evidence in relation to the Association’s recorded accounts payables amounting to $744, 635 of the $781, 588 recorded in the consolidated financial statements, over which there was no system of internal control on which we could rely for the support of our audit.

“There were no other satisfactory audit procedures that we could adopt to satisfy ourselves that the recorded accounts payables were free from material misstatements. In addition, the organisation has many pending litigations and the internal controls are not designed in a way that enables the identification of unrecorded liabilities.

“A substantial portion of income comprises grants and donations. Due to the nature of this income it is impracticable to implement accounting controls prior to entry of such income in the books of account.

Whilst we have no reason to believe that there is any unrecorded income of this nature, we were unable to confirm this’’.

The auditors also observed that it was difficult to ascertain ZIFA’s true financial position owing to the shambolic manner the accounts were compiled.

“In our opinion, because of the significance of the matters discussed in the basis for opinion paragraph, the consolidated financial statements do not present fairly, the financial position of Zimbabwe Football Association as at 31 December 2011, and its financial performance and cash flows for the year then ended in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards.

“Without further qualifying our opinion, we draw attention to note 13 to the financial statements which indicates that the organisation had an accumulated loss of $ (3,095,268) for the year ended December 31 2011 and, as at that date, the organisation’s total liabilities exceeded its total assets by (2,104,325).

“Note 13 also indicates conditions, along with other matters described in note 12, that indicate the existence of a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt on the organisation’s ability to continue as a going concern,” noted the auditors.