Thread by @PriscaMutema2

1/12 THREAD!!!🔥🔥🔥 (learnt that from @matigary)

So, it's become the norm for the government of Zimbabwe to respond to my exposés by making preemptive public declarations or taking action that actually curtails further and deeper investigation. For example:

2/12

When I exposed the ZAMCO scam, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube, responded by ordering ZAMCO to stop assuming any more private sector debts with immediate effect. No investigation was made into the bigwigs whose bank loans had already been taken over and paid for by...

3/12

...taxpayers. At least the theft was ended, right? But what about accountability? Taxpayer money (through Treasury Bills) was used to let corrupt, connected people and companies siphon borrowed US$ out of the country, buying property and fattening offshore accounts.

4/12

Then, when I exposed the government ghost worker scam run by Brighton Chiuzingo, the Paymaster-General, gvt simply announced (the day after my Twitter thread) they'd suspended him and kept quiet for a couple of months before bringing him back into the Public Service.

5/12

No report about any investigation or the results of such an investigation. Parliament is a waste of time and money: they never called the Public Service Minister or the Paymaster himself to appear before them to get to the bottom of the scandal and investigate..

6/12

Now, today, after my last thread on the abuse of the forex auction by banks and some companies, @ReserveBankZIM issues a statement to @TrevorNcube's ZimInd saying they are probing "shady tycoons and firms" for abuse of the forex auction!

theindependent.co.zw/2021/02/19/rbz…

7/12

Yes, there are shelf companies in play, but a tiny %. All FIU has to do with those is make unannounced visits to their registered offices & ask to see the operations they're funding with forex from the auction.

8/12

The vast majority of the abuse of auction is by established players. This is why, @BusisaMoyo, we need total transparency: name the beneficiaries of the each and every auction when RBZ announces auction results. That will aid whistle-blowing such as, for example:

9/12

...how does a fuel company get forex from the auction when they are selling ALL their fuel to the public in US$? How is such a fuel company able to declare a 30% line item profit purely on "exchange rate gain", @matigary?

10/12

How does a company get US$s for raw material @ auction &, since the auction started, they've only procured a small fraction of the raw materials for which they got forex? Has anyone bothered to match invoices to Bills of Lading, verified quantities of product actually

11/12

......delivered to factories? US$100k can pay off a lot of people at ZIMRA, at the bank, etc to make the paperwork look right & it's nothing for someone who stands to gain a couple of millions of US$s for each couple of 100s of thousands of US4 they "invest" in bribes.

12/12

It's worrying that Mangudya says his focus is on "managing the economy" without worrying about the bleeding happening at the forex auction: as people get away with it, others will also pile in and by the end of this year, there'll be no economy to manage!