State witness rocks Mangoma fraud trial

via State witness rocks Mangoma fraud trial – NewZimbabwe 21/09/2015

THE trial of former energy minister Elton Mangoma on fraud charges opened Monday with despair for the prosecution as its witness backed the opposition politician who denies the allegations.

Mangoma is accused of flouting tender procedures by allegedly forcing the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) to award a tender to OK Zimbabwe.

However, Cledywin Nyanhete, a principal officer at the State Procurement Board (SPB) which is the complainant in the case, stunned prosecutors when he told the court that Mangoma had no case to answer.

Nyanhete, who was the State’s first witness, said ZETDC managing director and principal accounting officer, Julian Chinembiri, should answer the charges instead.

This contradicted prosecutors’ allegations that Mangoma – while running the energy portfolio in the coalition government – ordered ZETDC to illegally cancel a prepared electricity metres tender and award it to OK Zimbabwe.

“Chinembiri is the one who should be in the dock according to the SPB Act. We have complaints against him and not Mangoma,” said Nyanhete.

Mangoma denied the charges when he appeared before Harare magistrate Hosea Mujaya.

Through his lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, the opposition politician said his accusers were “totally ignorant of the functions and responsibilities of a minister” regarding entities under their portfolio.

“My client will further contend that in terms of law, an accounting officer who considers that he has been given a directive with financial implications which such officer is not authorised to make is obliged to submit his written objections to the minister and he will require that the complainant produces written objections to the alleged directive,” said Mtetwa.

“(As such) why would anyone say there is something wrong with the cancellation of tender if there was not even a single document protesting a directive from the minister?”

Mangoma further argued that the case was part of persecution he has been subjected to by the State over the past five years and was designed to intimidate him to abandon his political beliefs.

Meanwhile, the second state witness Enock Ncube, a former ZETDC commercial director, said Mangoma ordered him and the projects manager to engage OK Zimbabwe.

“He was not happy with the projects and wanted us to have more vending systems outside ZESA vending systems,” said Ncube.

“We took that as a directive and engaged OK. We knew it was a big job which needed going to tender but we did not do so because we took his communication as a directive.”

The trial continues Tuesday.

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