daniel chigunwe
Yeukai Karengezeka
Court Correspondent
A civil servant and her accomplice appeared in court this week for allegedly importing a vehicle using a fake rebate authorisation letter.
Tendai Tekesi (36) from Chitungwiza and Blandina Ratidza Madzima (44), a civil servant, appeared before Harare regional magistrate Mrs Marehwanazvo Gofa charged with fraud.
They were released on US$150 bail each and remanded to November 24.
It is the State’s case that in October last year, Madzima purchased through BeForward a Nissan Ad van motor vehicle. She submitted the application for rebate to import her motor vehicle duty free under the civil servants’ motor vehicle rebate scheme.
Investigations established that in December last year, Madzima then approached someone called Claudious Tandi and inquired if he knew anybody who could assist her to acquire a rebate since the Ministry of Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion was taking too long to approve her application.
Tandi took Madzima’s documents and sent them to someone called Erick Jairos whom he knew and Jairos in turn sent them to Tekesi who, acting in connivance with Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) officials, then generated a fake rebate letter in the name of Madzima without a letter of authorisation from the Ministry of Finance.
Madzima then took the fraudulent rebate letter and produced it to Zimra officials in Beitbridge misrepresenting that she had been authorised by the Finance Ministry to import her motor vehicle duty free under the scheme.
As a result of the misrepresentation, Zimra suffered potential prejudice for the duty not paid which is yet to be quantified.
The vehicle has since been seized by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission.
In 2019, the Government introduced a civil servants’ motor vehicle rebate scheme under which Government employees that had served for 10 years and above were allowed to import motor vehicles duty-free with maximum values dependent on their employment grades.
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