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Yeukai Karengezeka
Court Correspondent
Two employees of Harare City Council’s planning department have been arrested after a ZACC investigation and have appeared in court for fraudulently issuing council receipts and documents.
Brian Ticky (30) and Procedure Marange (38) appeared before Harare magistrate Mr Stanford Mambanje charged with forgery and possession of articles for criminal use and were remanded out of custody on bail of $150 000 each.
In Marange’s case, the State alleged that in February this year, the Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission received information that Kopera Eugene Tendai had tendered at Tafara district offices a forged document purported to have been issued by City of Harare.
The fake was discovered at the district office leading to his arrest by municipal officers who took him to ZACC.
He told them that he had paid US$385 to Marange to get the receipt for a plan approval which was was not stamped.
Upon discovering that ZACC was now looking for him, Marange deleted evidence from his computer and other ICT appliances at his office along Kwame Nkrumah Avenue but that did not slow down the ZACC team much.
On Saturday, ZACC arrested him and Ticky whose computer was also scrutinised.
The preliminary search by ZACC on the computers allegedly found that Marange was producing Harare council documents for fraudulent use. Going through Ticky’s laptop bag the ZACC team recovered 28 copies of blank purported receipts, two blank City of Harare letterheads and a copy of a plan approval for a property developer authored by the Acting Director of Works.
Enquiries made with City of Harare chamber secretary Mr Warren Chiwawa and revenue head Alfred Guni found that the documents were security items which could not be given to individuals while blank.
The two officials said they were having problems with such documents which were being unlawfully used.
Ticky failed to proffer a plausible explanation as to why he was in possession of these blank documents.
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