ive Reserve Bank governors, including Gideon Gono, have failed to stop this form of looting.
RBZ officials said the allowances were issued to cover possible emergencies, such as a coup, that may prevent the officials from returning home. The amount was separate from the general travel business allowance.
Investigations by The Zimbabwean have revealed that a number of senior RBZ employees were tortured by the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and subsequently dismissed during the 1990s after they had compiled statistics showing figures of what Mugabe and other officials owed the bank in un-surrendered funds.
The document, a copy of which is in our possession, threatened to bring the matter into the open. One of the architects of the protest, who spoke to this paper on condition of anonymity, said he and his colleagues were arrested by the CIO and tortured before being dismissed with stern warnings.
“The president and other senior government officials have not been returning funds from the Contingency Account number 020-12500 since 1980,” reads part of the document. “We have compiled the statistics and believe that these funds must be recovered from the individuals who should have surrendered them on their return. The amount owed to the bank by the president and other government officials is about US$8 million and must be recovered by the bank.”
Efforts to obtain comment from former RBZ governors, Kombo Moyana and Leonard Tsumba were not successful.
However, a former deputy director revealed in confidence that his boss had tried to address the issue but “the CIO informed him clearly that he had to leave the issue as it was”.
Gono has allowed the system to continue, sources at the central bank said.
Efforts over the past two weeks to obtain comment from him have not yielded anything, despite repeated apologies and promises by his personal assistant that he would respond to the formal list of questions sent to him as requested.
A former minister in Mugabe’s government also confirmed the looting of funds from the Contingency Account. “That is true and anyone who has been there (in government) has benefited. That is why everyone wants to travel on state business,” he said.
Post published in: News