Zimra bosses hearings begin

Source: Zimra bosses hearings begin – DailyNews Live

Ndakaziva Majaka      7 March 2017

HARARE – The Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) says disciplinary hearings
for suspended Commissioner General Gershem Pasi and five other executives
have begun.

Zimra director for legal and corporate services Florence Jambwa, last week
said Pasi’s cross-examination was being handled externally.

“The hearings are going on, you know disciplinary hearings are very
complicated and can take quite some time to get completed so they are
on-going and we are not yet in a position to give you a date of when they
will be finished because we don’t know…” she said at a workshop last
week.

This was after the national tax collector sent Pasi and five other
executives on forced paid leave in May last year to pave way for
investigations on allegations of corruption and poor corporate governance
unearthed by a forensic audit instituted by the Auditor-General’s Office.

The affected executives are Loss Control director Charlton Chihuri;
Commissioner of Customs and Excise Anna Mutombodzi; ICT and
Infrastructural Development director Tjiyapo Velempini, Internal audit
boss Clive Charles Majengwa and director for Human Resources Sithokozile
Thembani Mrewa.

Initially, the hearings of the five managers were supposed to be conducted
last month with Pasi’s interrogation slated for this month, however, the
process is dragging on almost a year after the managers were suspended.

According to Zimra sources, the organisation’s code of conduct stipulates
that in such instances, implicated officers must appear before the
disciplinary committee within 14 days.

However, the process hit a snag in November last year, after Pasi through
his lawyers filed a bid to interdict the hearings, which was dismissed by
High Court judge Justice Lavender Makoni.

The board has since suspended salaries for all the implicated managers.

The salary freeze was on the back of an HLB Zimbabwe Chartered Accountants
forensic audit that accused the six of having allegedly prejudiced the tax
collecting agency of millions of dollars in shady dealings.

However, Jambwa said she could not give timelines on when the process
would be completed.

“…But hearings are on-going and when completed you will get to know the
results,” she said.