Former State House Official Exposes High-level Corruption
Former State House principal director, Douglas Tapfuma, has fingered senior government and Zanu PF officials in underhand dealings involving the abuse of the free-duty vehicle scheme to import personal vehicles.
Tapfuma, an ally of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, is facing criminal abuse of office charge after he allegedly bought five personal vehicles using the official facility.
He revealed that Youth deputy minister Tinoda Machakaire, who runs TinMac, a logistics company, is one of the party functionaries who also abused the facility, and that several senior officials that he could not name also used the duty-free facility.
In his testimony before the court on Monday, Tapfuma declared that he was not the first official to use the facility. He said:
Everyone in government and Zanu PF has been doing it.
… It is a system that has been in existence for long to import personal vehicles through the Office of the President and Cabinet under the vehicles duty-free facility.
TinMac Company has done exactly what I am accused of and using the same documents that I used. Mupereri also used the same documents. These kinds of transactions have been in existence for a long time.
Tapfuma asserted that the allegations against him were malicious, and he accused Deputy Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Ray Ndhlukula of wanting to second his own people to the position that he held.
