admin
It is staggering to find that over the last four years at least 2 000 civil servants abused the special rebate scheme allowing them to import a motor vehicle without paying customs duty.
They are not benefiting, or going to benefit, from this abuse as the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission has been hunting them down and winning convictions, and then moves to the next step of the having the vehicles forfeited to the State, so there is no gain whatsoever.
But corrupt activities of this magnitude suggest there were some well-organised rings of dealers or others involved, and criminal systems put in place that helped civil servants break the law by providing a market.
Court records show that the main way of abusing the rebate was for a buyer from outside the civil service to put up the money for the import plus a cut for the corrupt civil servant, have the car brought in and registered in the name of the civil servant, and then see the driver use it as if it was their own, but without changing the formal ownership.
Presumably there would be agreement in place that after the minimum number of years the civil servant had to own the car to benefit from the rebate, it would be sold for a totally trivial sum to the actual user and the ownership changed.
Court cases suggest that there were some dealers who acted as the middlemen in these transactions, for a another modest cut, and the scale of the abuse suggests this must have been more common than not.
Some civil servants abusing the scheme might well have wanted to limit this to close relatives, and perhaps there are a bunch of siblings, children and cousins driving around as yet uncaught.
But those cases will be almost impossible to prove.
ZACC has been using the recovery of corruptly-obtained assets as a growing tool in the fight against corruption, by at least taking away the fruits of corruption and leaving the person committing corrupt acts with nothing.
The outgoing chairperson of the commission, Justice Loice Matanda-Moyo, now the Prosecutor-General, said that ZACC was likely to be able to recover assets worth more than US$700 million this year, taking the total up to over US$1 billion, which shows just how much the campaign has accelerated in recent times.
Although a lot of recovery work is a civil case, where the test is proof on the balance of probabilities, a much easier mark to hit than the proof beyond reasonable doubt that a criminal conviction requires, a growing percentage of the asset recovery is actually following a criminal conviction.
ZACC now reckons around 77 percent of prosecutions succeed, and the attack on those abusing the car rebate scheme, for example, relies almost totally on convictions.
This upgrade of the investigating units, and their ability to dig up the evidence, is a major legacy that Justice Matanda-Moyo leaves behind at ZACC.
Although Justice Matanda-Moyo is now in charge of the National Prosecuting Authority, her experience both on the High Court Bench and then on the investigations side with the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission, would seem to be a useful background as she tightens up the prosecution side and ensures that there is the maximum possible effective co-operation between those who investigate and those who take the cases to court for prosecution.
But sometimes, no matter how deep an investigator digs, or how effective a prosecution might be, there simply is not enough evidence for a criminal conviction, but a lot of evidence that a corrupt person appears to have accumulated assets far beyond what their declared earnings and business activities can justify.
The civil route is also useful when the criminal has left the country hurriedly.
It is difficult to extradite criminals on corruption charges, as compared to murder, assault and robbery charges, but at least a properly conducted civil investigation can grab the assets left behind by the fleeing criminal.
The recovery and forfeiture of assets obtained by criminal means following a criminal conviction is basically automatic, as the evidence is now so great that it was enough to send someone to jail, let alone grab everything they obtained through fraud, theft and abuse of public office.
Recovering the fruits of crime is as almost as much a deterrent as the jailing of the criminals.
For a start it means that corrupt activity is unlikely to produce the sort of wealth and lifestyles the corrupt hope for.
Secondly a corrupt criminal cannot just regard a few years behind bars as a price to pay for the accessing of their corrupt fortune after release.
So we reach the stage that corruption not only does not produce any wealth, but also produces the risk of a lengthy jail term, and that risk is increasing as the investigations and the prosecutions are done better.
It seems a major shame that such a large block of civil servants were tempted to abuse their rebate privilege, but it must also be remembered that the majority who used the scheme used it for the intended purpose, and that it was a major help to many civil service households.
So there is no need for the Government to kill the scheme, but probably a need to work ways of checking up very quickly that the criminal minority cannot abuse it.
It would also be useful if the car dealers involved in corrupting civil servants were brought to justice.
The buyers who thought they were getting a bargain will be hammered when they lose access to the vehicle involved, and thus waste their money.
Online Reporter