BERNARD MPOFU
President Mnangagwa’s special anti-corruption unit has launched an investigation into the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority after a senior revenue services commissioner was named for demanding a bribe from a whistleblower who had exposed alleged cases of tax evasion involving government entities and a local commercial bank, Business Times can report.
Two years ago, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI)’s Zimbabwe Corruption in Business Survey revealed that the police and State Procurement Board were the most corrupt institutions in the country while Zimra also made it to the hall of shame as the third most corrupt.
After committing to weed out white collar crime in both the public and private sectors President Emmerson Mnangagwa set up a special unit to deal with graft saying treasury had been prejudiced millions of dollars in revenue.
According to sources at the unit, a whistleblower who has worked with Zimra for years, this week submitted a dossier to the commission, the tax agency and the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission outlining a series of alleged corrupt activities carried out by the official while carrying out his duties. An official from ZACC also confirmed that they were seized with the matter.
The report shows that government could have lost millions of dollars due to such activities.
According to impeccable sources the whistleblower, (name supplied) placed charges against a senior Zimra official in the investigation department for allegedly demanding a bribe in a case involving the country’s state owned mobile phone operator.
In these papers, the whistleblower claimed that NetOne Cellular was underpaying value added tax, withholding tax, income tax, and special excise due to airtime in 2015.
A local audit firm then carried an investigation into the entity which highlighted gross irregularities which led to the firing of former CE Reward Kangai. He also cited how a local commercial bank was underpaying, withholding tax.
“(The Zimra official) demanded a bribe from me in 2017 so that he could quickly facilitate my case in which I had reported NetOne Cellular for tax evasion of nonresident tax, withholding tax, value added tax, income tax, special excise due on airtime and payee,” the whistleblower wrote in papers seen by this paper.
“I refused to accede to his demand for a bribe or any form or any undue consideration and this was the beginning of my problems with (the Zimra official). However, in a concerted effort to avoid confrontation I requested the official to recuse himself from all my cases as he was conflicted but he vehemently refused.”
The Zimra official, the whistleblower claimed pulled documents from his file and attempted to reduce the amount of money that was due to him for whistleblowing. Zimra pays whistleblowers up to 10 percent of the recovered funds.
“The Zimra official has been withholding payments for my cases despite him being legally obliged to do so,” the whistleblower said in the papers.
In one of the annexures attached to the papers submitted to the commission, the whistleblower, through his Harare-based lawyers in January 2018, demanded that Zimra pay him his dues.
“Our client appealed to the board chair Willia Bonyongwe and the acting commissioner-general who ordered a re-look into the taxes that our client was not satisfied with. It is pertinent to note that the then acting commissioner immediately suspended (a senior Zimra official,” the lawyers wrote.
The whistleblowers, according to the lawyers was only satisfied after the issue was re-investigated.
The Zimra official being accused of demanding a bribe in one of the letters attached to the dossier confirmed that the authority had information from the whistleblower which would assist the authority to recover funds from the entities that were implicated in tax evasion but however said the figures being claimed by the whistleblower were overstated.
Last month, the whistleblower according to sources also wrote to Zimra commissioner-general Faith Mazani alerting the tax agency of an investment firm that was not making full disclosures on withholding tax. Contacted for comment, Bonyongwe said her board had not been notified of the investigation.
“Nobody has notified us of this development so I wouldn’t know about that issue. But I’m sure once such an investigation is completed we would know, Bonyongwe said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
Early this year, Bonyongwe likened corruption in the authority to organised crime after revealing that the authority was battling corrupt elements within its ranks.
“It is like you have got cancer in your body, you have to attack it holistically so that it doesn’t migrate from the arm to head or the leg and we have done what we can but it would really require a national consensus,” she said during the authority’s inaugural annual general meeting.
“I think the fight for corruption, we have done, but I do not even think we have moved, we are just scratching on the surface. As Zimra alone, we can’t because the corruption at Zimra is being carried out not only by Zimra staff but with people out there. It is like organised crime really, so we need help.”
Estimates show that the tax collector is losing millions annually due to corruption.
In its 2017 annual report, Zimra said it had toll-free hotlines to receive reports on corruption, carry out asset declarations and lifestyle audits on staff members as deterrents to corruption.
Zimra, which underwent a major shakeup of senior managers has introduced a cocktail of measures such electronic cargo tracking to minimize revenue leakages at the country’s ports of entry.
Mazani also told the same meeting that whistleblowers also played a role in exposing graft with the tax agency.
“Indeed as an organisation we are doing the best we can to fight corruption. Our biggest strategy to deal with corruption internally is through our code of conduct to ensure that whoever is caught is actually brought to book and the requisite penalties are imposed, including dismissals,” Mazani said.
“We have also taken advantage of our whistle blower facility as the chairman indicated, which gives us information on our internal and on those who are perpetrating it from outside which has helped us deal with the issue of compliance.”
Last year Zimra suspended 21 officials in the first half of the year and recovered $120 million through its anti-corruption drive following tip-offs from members of the public.
Bonyongwe, said the officials had been suspended during the period while three had been dismissed for corruption-related conduct.
“Corruption remains a challenge but Zimra’s resolve to combat it is strong. The anti-corruption hotline received 394 reports. Of these 218 were fully investigated while the remaining cases are still under different investigations,” she said.
“The investigations yielded about $120 million in assessments, 21 suspensions resulting in three officers who were dismissed as a result of those reports. Some officials are still undergoing disciplinary hearings.”
