Source: Zimra boss cooks academic papers – Audit exposes fake O-Level passes, degree | The Herald October 29, 2016
Lloyd Gumbo Senior Reporter—
Zimbabwe Revenue Authority loss control director Mr Charlton Chihuri only has four Ordinary Level passes, but has been working at the revenue authority for 13 years after forging qualifications, a recent audit revealed.
This is contained in the forensic audit report conducted by HLB Zimbabwe Chartered Accountants into the operations of the revenue collector following reports by whistle-blowers of corruption and poor corporate governance.
The report is part of Zimra’s court record filed with the High Court yesterday, while responding to suspended Commissioner-General Gershem Pasi’s urgent application seeking to halt its disciplinary process against him.
“Our investigations revealed that Mr Charlton Chihuri misrepresented his academic qualifications to Zimra as early as 2003 when he first applied for the post of Loss Control Officer,” reads the report.
“He misrepresented that he had obtained six Ordinary Level passes, scored six Advanced Level points and that he was the legitimate holder of a Bachelor of Science Honours in Economics Degree with the University of Zimbabwe.
“Upon inquiry with both the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council and the University of Zimbabwe (UZ), we established that he had misrepresented his results. He neither has six Ordinary Level passes nor does he hold any degree with the University of Zimbabwe. In actual fact, he has only four Ordinary Level passes excluding English, and he failed his Advanced Level examinations with two F symbols and an O symbol.”
The auditors said the UZ refuted claims that Mr Chihuri graduated from the institution and categorically stated that the degree certificate that he presented to Zimra was fictitious.
The auditors said Mr Chihuri’s file with Zimra contained a Master’s degree with the University of Liverpool whose legitimacy is being questioned given that generally one cannot obtain a Master’s without an undergraduate qualification.
“Mr Charlton Chihuri even failed Zimra training tests for supervisors and managers, scoring two F symbols for Tariff and Procedure 1 respectively. Ironically, he was being showered with performance awards every quarter by the Commissioner-General Gershem Pasi.
“The role of director Loss Control is crucial and cannot be efficiently executed by an unsuited candidate. The authority was prejudiced to the tune of US$1,6 million in remuneration paid to an unqualified person. It was surely upon the leadership at Zimra to put in place measures to detect such cases of academic fraud. These measures were not there and if they existed, they were not effective enough to prevent or detect the academic fraud.
“The conduct was damaging and could have far reaching consequences, considering that Zimra acts in the public interest. The reputation of Zimra as a state entity is put to task by this damning revelation,” said the auditors.
The auditors also established that another loss control officer, Mr Benjamin Zenda was employed without the requisite qualifications and through a process fraught with irregularities.
“Whereby the Commissioner-General gave a directive to Ms (Christine) Musemburi, the Human Resources director that he had head-hunted a person for the post of loss control officer and that had to be processed urgently.
“Apart from the fact that the post of loss control officer was not advertised nor interviews carried out, Mr Zenda was not qualified for the post as he does not hold at least an undergraduate degree. The special interest in the head-hunting of Mr Zenda by the Commissioner General is peculiar,” said the auditors.
The auditors also rapped management for failure to act on information that was supplied by a whistleblower and allowing Mr Pasi to direct employees of the authority to make misrepresentations that the authority had investigated and found no evidence of wrong doing.
“The whistleblower died in a car accident in July 2016 just two days before a scheduled meeting with one of the Zimra board members, with whom he was meant to discuss his frustrations regarding the matter. He left documentation with his lawyers now the executor of his estate,” said the auditors.
COMMENTS
Several Government Departments shared a photocopier in Cecil House. Was in the queue behind a senior member of the Tourism Department. “Won’t be long just giving my son some extra O Levels.”
It seems that Zanu PF may have created a slight exception to John Cleese’s observations on stupidity. There is an innate cleverness with the likes of Mugabe and Scoones, in getting people to believe that their mujiba policy of jobs for mates was a massive step forward for mankind. That was the clever part – fooling the world. Then came the Stupidity – assuming that printing money and destroying title would make everybody wealthy! Thus cleverness and stupidity can live side by side! in the case of Scoones and Mugabe at least. The real problem is that how could Scoones and Mugabe truly define just how clever they were in the first instance – politically. And then secondly – just how stupid they were in terms of food security and economics. However, we must realize that their policies have not impoverished either themselves or their families – which was quite clever?
This is nothing new to people of vision. This has been for decades the reason behind Zim collapse. They cook everything from birth certificate to Phd degrees. ZANU PF has created a sodom of economy it comes @ a price to clean the rot & decay plaguing the country.
When will this happen, that this curse cloud passes over our heads, and dear Lord what crime did we as Zimbabweans, commit to have such a government or is it
The crime was indifference.
People get the government they deserve. The Zimbabwean Shona male is a rank coward who has not lifted a finger to stop the rot. If the Matabele were numerically the larger tribal group, the desperate plight of Zimbabwe would never have been tolerated for so long. Mugabe made sure the Matabele were smashed forever with the Gukurahundi. He knew this was essential to staying n power.
The plundering started soon after independence, at every level, mostly against whites, with undisguised glee. Stealing rather than earning a living became the nation’s modus operandi. Thing is, it kinda worked at first – until there was nothing left to loot. Then the thieves started falling out among themselves and the descent into chaos began. Mugabe tried to print his way out with the now infamous Zimbabwe dollar. A French traveller I met recently has spent time in much of Africa: he told me Zimbabwe is the only country where there is no rural informal roadside economic activity. Nil, nada, zilch. Everywhere else, someone has a stall for something: fruit, chickens, carvings. Whatever. Zimbabwe is just dead.
The Matabele always regarded the Shona as little more than insects or dogs: the contempt may be more accurate than many are prepared to admit. Bring back white administrators, farmers, and Zimbabwe would recover overnight.
Charlton is a charlatan.
And the guy who is actually qualified to do this job is cleaning toilets in the UK.
Who is responsible for the whistleblowers death, I wonder. Don’t forget that Zimra has been ‘captured’ by the CIO, inso far as the CIO boss’s wife is the chairman of the Zimra board and is now in charge since Pasi has been suspended.
Chihuri?
Is this Chihuri related to Dr Augustine Chihuri, policeman extrordinaire?
How could these blatant lies have gone unnoticed for 13 years? How can someone claim to have six A levels?. This when anyone who has gone through our Zimbabwe school system knows that such a high number of A levels would have been some sort of national record, and reported in all of the media.
And on top of this also falsely claiming a UniZim BSc Honours in Economics for 13 years! Surely someone at ZIMRA must have become suspicious when he kept getting an F in their in-house training course tests. Surely his work colleagues knew that these Fs did not stand for “Fantastic”! Did someone not ever say to Mr. Chihuri, “BSc Honours in Economics at UniZim, what year? Did you not know my brother Joshua Mugadza? He did that same degree in 2000”. The whole thing beggars belief!
And then to top it all was Mr Chihuri’s claim of a Master’s degree from the University of Liverpool.
The whole situation just shows to what depths the Zimbabwe civil service has sunk.
And as for the auditors. Why did it take them 13 years to put two and two together to unmask Mr. Chihuri?
Here in the UK if you want to check on a degree certificate you simply phone the Registrar of the University concerned and he/she will confirm or deny the claim immediately. They do this because they are fully confident of the integrity and correctness of their academic records, and are determined to stop charlatans like Mr. Chihuri in their tracks. Does the University of Zimbabwe offer the same help?
Just think of how many of Mugabe’s inner circle knew of Mr. Chihuri’s false claims and because of this were able to gag him, or at least squeeze some of his tender body parts, and then defraud the country of millions in uncollected tax!
But not only must Mr. Chihuri go to jail for Fraud, but all the others who were able to blackmail him into silence when cheating on their tax returns. And we must believe that there are many of our Zimbabwe taxpayers in this category.
God help Zimbabwe…
But even Grace got a PhD or something of the sort in a record few weeks.You’ll find all the chefs will have bogus credentials.
shonas are the most dumpest people yet they regard themselves as the most educated people . This is a case with these officials who cooked certificates and qualifications to get to the top . Infact a large number of shonas must be investigated on their qualifications coz educated people cant allow zimbabwe to be what it is now , this raises a question on the genuinity of their qualifications.
Shonas are not dumb at all. Think about it. Pasi puts an incompetent in post as Loss Control Officer. Thus losses can go unnoticed and if the Loss Control Officer did try to take any action against the big wigs they would blackmail him over his false qualifications. If only Zimbabweans would use their outstanding abilities for the good of the country instead of devising ways for personal enrichment we could have a wonderful country for all.