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Development Funds in 2010.
Officials in the ministry said they were now finalising their findings and would forward them to the police.
Secretary for Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs Mrs Virginia Mabhiza said her ministry was finalising its audit in all the country’s constituencies.
“We have since established that there are 20 extreme cases where MP’s have abused money they were given for CDF.
“In one instance, one legislator actually bought a lorry for his personal use and we are now in the process of taking that lorry back since it is State property,” said Mrs Mabhiza.
“After noting that we have 20 legislators who abused the funds we have written a report which we gave our minister Mr Eric Matinenga so that he can forward the names to the police and the law will take its course.”
The ministry has since said that this year it would disburse CDF after the elections and once it had completed its audit.
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Mrs Mabhiza said they were now left with 16 constituencies out of the 210 they were auditing and would release the findings of the audit by mid-June.
“Of these 20 MP’s we noted that some of them did not even respond to us when we asked them what they used the CDF they were allocated to.
“Some were resisting and intimidating our auditors, while others would lie to us and postpone meeting our auditors. In other cases there are MP’s who died and this has made it difficult for us to carry out the audit,” said Mrs Mabhiza.
She said it was premature for her office to release the names of the legislators.
In his 2013 National Budget presentation last November, Finance Minister Tendai Biti set aside $5 million to be shared among the 210 parliamentary constituencies meaning that each constituency would get US$23 000.
Four MPs were arrested and charged with misappropriation of the funds, but their prosecution was stopped following the intervention of Attorney General’s office.
The MP’s included Albert Mhlanga (MDC-T, Pumula), Marvellous Khumalo (MDC-T, St Mary’s), Franco Ndambakuwa (Zanu PF, Magunje) and Cleopas Machacha (MDC-T, Kariba).
They were all arrested and charged with corruption over the abuse of the fund.
Mrs Mabhiza said all the legislators who had been charged earlier on had not been cleared and would soon be brought before the courts.
“Those cases have been withdrawn by the State before plea, so in other words the State is at liberty to resume the cases any time.
“It is only that our offices are gathering sufficient evidence and once we are satisfied we will definitely continue with the court cases,’’ she said.
“As ministry we are not moved by a political party saying they have carried their own audit, the fact remains the same, government auditors did their job and found anomalies in these constituencies and people should be answerable to what they did with the CDF,” said Mrs Mabhiza.
Online Reporter