CHENGETAI ZVAUYA
The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Accounts has given Sakunda Holdings and its founder Kudakwashe Tagwirei, pictured, the last chance to appear before the commitee on March 16.
PAC warned that it may be forced to order police to drag the commodities firm to parliament.
Tagwirei has failed to appear before PAC on three occasions since September last year when it started the probe on Command Agriculture financing.
The committee invited Sakunda Holdings, Tagwirei and the commodities firm’s top firm management.
They failed to attend the hearings. PAC chairperson Tendai Biti told Business Times that it will continue its public hearing and probe on the Command Agriculture programme and they are expecting Sakunda to appear before the committee on March 16.
“We are expected to present our report to Parliament on March 22 and we have given Sakunda Holdings another chance to come before us for the oral evidence.
We have gathered a lot of information on the financial transactions that Sakunda received money from the Treasury,” Biti said.
“The committee does not want to reach a situation where we are going to ask the police through the Clerk of Parliament to summon Sakunda Holdings executives including Tagwirei to appear before parliament to give us evidence.”
He said the committee wanted to know what happened to the money and the onus is on Sakunda to explain as PAC was about to reach the conclusion that the “money was not used for its intended purpose”.
“Sakunda Holdings and its management should stop this business of dodging us as we want them to come to the committee and this is the last chance for them to appear before us or we shall be asking Parliament and the police to issue summons against them,”Biti said.
The lawmaker said the Privileges, Immunities and Powers of Parliament Act empowered committees to summon any person to appear before them and produce any documents required.
The Act also lists offences such as prevarication during questioning, presenting false information, tampering with, threatening or unduly influencing any person with regards to the evidence, and publishing defamatory statements about a member as offences.
Biti told Business Times that despite the problems he has been having with some MPs trying to stop the probe, the committee will meet on Monday to hear evidence from various players including Sakunda Holdings.
“As a committee we want to put an end into Command Agriculture projects and write a report to Parliament but we cannot do so without first hearing oral evidence from Sakunda Holdings and Tagwirei,” Biti said.
Biti said the committee will probe all companies that received public funds.
He said Pedstock Investments will also appear before the committee on March 16.
The Grain Marketing Board and Croco Motors will appear before the committee on March 10.
Biti said Sakunda and Tagwirei have to appear before the committee as they are key to the probe in Command Agriculture.
“If we fail to summon Tagwirei and his company Sakunda Holdings there is no probe into the Command Agriculture to talk about because Sakunda Holdings is central to the probe as it was paid by the Treasury huge amounts of money that it has to account for,” said Biti.
Sakunda Holdings has been paid US$2 billion for Command Agriculture by the Treasury through Treasury Bills.
Biti said part of the PAC’s agenda has seen them summoning Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya and his team and the minister of Finance and Economic Development to explain how they were using public funds and financing projects that are of national interest.
