Fraud costs Zesa US$3m

Carlos Elija (32) and Philip Jaricha (27) were employed by a Spanish computer consultancy company headquartered in India.

The two were responsible for maintenance of the power utility’s computer systems, providing technical and computer systems support.

The pair was yesterday arraigned before Harare magistrate Mr Munamato Mutevedzi facing fraud charges.

They were not asked to plead to the charges.

However, Mr Mutevedzi remanded them to October 11 on US$500 bail each coupled with stringent conditions.

They were ordered not travel to outside a 30km radius from Harare and report twice per week to their nearest police stations.

The two were also required to surrender their passports to the Clerk of Court.

It is the State’s case that in 2000 Zesa entered into a contract with Soluziona Limited to have a computer system installed for purposes of electricity distribution, billing and financial control.

The Indian-based computer firm deployed its personnel at one of Zesa’s branches at the corner of Samora Machel Avenue and Park Street.

It is alleged that Elija and Jaricha — acting in concert and with intent to defraud Zesa — manipulated Harare BATCH, a system commonly used to sort out programme errors.

The duo is said to have activated the programme to deal with financial programmes of receipting money without the knowledge of the Zesa Information Technology Section.

Using the programme from the national computer server, they allegedly misrepresented to the power utility’s financial section that money had been received from Zesa billed customers.

They allegedly entered false amounts into the system and credited them as arrears on the creditors’ account to avoid detection by the audit department.

The money was to be paid by Zesa customers as they footed their bills while the suspects allegedly pocketed the money.

The money was supposed to be paid to the company but the two allegedly concealed the offence by reducing amounts of the bills in the system to zero using an unauthorised Harare BATCH, as a financial programme in the national server.

The offence allegedly came to light when a customer gave information to the parastatal’s loss control department leading to several scams being unearthed.

It is alleged Zesa suffered an actual prejudice in the sum of US$3 635 927,59 and nothing was recovered.

The State is relying on Zesa customers who paid part of their monies to the suspects resulting in the bills in the server deleted to zero reading.

There are also electricity bills recovered from the duo’s individual accounts, which were tampered with in the Zesa national computer server.