All to blame in Capital Base saga

Shame Isaki
THE biggest problem we have in this country is that people hate the truth. It could be in politics, religion, families and business, people are choosing to transact on lies rather than truth. They want the truth only when it is in their favour. A lot has been said and written about the Capital Base saga and quite surprisingly everyone who ‘lost out’ or has a friend or relative who ‘lost out’ is angry with Salome Kambunda and company for ‘swindling them.

But the question is, were they really swindled or it was a question of a business deal gone wrong in which circumstances both parties must equally share blame. Get me right, I am not trying to take sides with Kambunda, but simply trying to be objective.

Salome Kambunda came up with an optimistic business plan which I believe in her own calculations and research plus advice she thought would definitely work. I believe like any other serious businessperson she also considered the risks and found them not to be a very significant threat to the running of the business.

Every businessperson agrees with me that business is about taking risks and most of the time you start off business without necessarily fulfilling all that is required at law or by the relevant regulating authority.

You tend to meet these obligations as the business progresses until such a time when you are fully regulated and in compliance because these processes require money which might not be readily available.

I believe Kambunda and company considered all this and decided to give it a try. They were going to run an ‘investment project’ which they made attractive to the prospective ‘investors’ by offering an unrealistically high interest of 30 percent per month, yes per month, not per annum on every amount deposited.

Let us not forget that this thing happened soon after people stopped enjoying ill-gotten money from the infamous ‘burning schemes’ which saw the economy almost crushing.

So people were already used to handling large amounts of cash without sweating for them which in itself was not a normal thing which was also dangerously addictive. Up to now there are some Zimbabweans who are still struggling to manage ‘small amounts’ of money because they were illegally exposed to huge amounts.

Given this background, Kambunda and company decided to take advantage of this ‘burning culture’ and introduced her own ‘burning style’. That was Kambunda’s role in this saga.

Now turning to those who responded to this call to do business – we cannot just treat them like saints or victims as people want us to widely believe, because there are a number of things that need to be put into perspective.

Serious investors know that before you part with your hard-earned cash you shop around for better options and carry out a due diligence exercise to establish the (1) the legality of the investment you are about to make (2) to ascertain the legal standing of the investment vehicle you want to use (3) verify compliance with all regulatory authorities i.e. local authority, ZIMRA, RBZ, Ministry of Finance and other bodies, among other things.

I believe all the Capital Base investors did not do this because they were so excited by the promised return on investment that they forgot about caution. As all this was happening it is surprising to note that there are also influential, educated people, law enforcement agents and other Government officials, some of whom were actually supposed to be monitoring such activities, but were all involved in this scandalous activity.

Greed coupled with blatant disregard of financial laws on both sides i.e. Capital Base and those who are crying foul actually cost the country lots of money at a time when the country was and is still suffering from a serious liquidity challenge. Some wives disregarded their husbands’ advice and went on to invest, but now they are crying foul.

Some families have disintegrated because of the Capital Base saga, while some former landlords are lodgers or destitute.
Turning to Government’s complicity in this whole saga, it is amazing how such an institution like Capital Base could exist for more than two years handling such huge amounts of money without being detected, monitored or sanctioned.

RBZ, ZIMRA, the local authority, ZRP, intelligence services and the Finance Ministry all knew that there was such a scheme running and why did they not take action to protect citizens which is what always gives credence to speculations that there could be some senior officials who would be behind such scams and they just use ordinary citizens as fronts.

After all having been said and done I believe it is not only Capital Base which should be blamed, but several parties.
While Capital Base should get its fair share of the blame, the ‘investors’ must also be blamed for greed and gullibility and money laundering.
Instead of mourning, they should actually be learning from their mistakes and not do this next time and meanwhile forgetting about this issue and move forward just like everybody else did when our Zim-dollar accounts were frozen and despite Minister Chinamasa’s promise that by April 2014 everyone was going to salvage something, we consider it as having lost out permanently.

It would sound like I am too harsh, but this is what happens when people make bad decisions — you live with the results. The RBZ is also largely to blame like I said earlier. I wonder where RBZ’s Surveillance Unit was when all this was happening.

Shame Isaki is a socio-political commentator, business consultant and preacher. He can be contacted on 020-68818 or 0773 018 662, e-mail: [email protected]