Harare man up for forgery

Michael Mashiri

A Waterfalls man has been taken to court for forging signatures.

Ropafadzo Kunze, 35, of Waterfalls was before magistrate Vongai Muchuchuti-Guwuriro at the Harare Magistrates' Courts accused of forgery.

The State alleges that in, January 2023, the Zimbabwe Anti- Corruption Commission received cases of criminal abuse of duty and fraud as defined in Sections 174 and 136 respectively of the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act, Chapter 9:23 reported against the top management of Industrial Development Corporation of Zimbabwe and investigations were made.

One of the cases had allegations of flouting tender procedures in the procurement of two service vehicles, that is, a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Ford Raptor, for the Acting General Manager of IDCZ, Edward Tome.

As part of the investigations January, 31, 2023, the Commission wrote a letter to the Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe, requesting a statement of procedure and a comment on whether IDCZ followed the stipulated procurement procedures when they purchased the two vehicles.

Subsequently, on February, 10, 2023, PRAZ wrote a letter to IDCZ acting general manager, requesting for the procurement record of the vehicles.

Kunze, in his capacity as legal manager at ICDZ, was then tasked by the acting general manager to respond to the PRAZ request and to avail the procurement records of the two vehicles.

This was despite the fact that the response was supposed to have been done through Sunway City, a subsidiary of IDCZ which is the procuring entity for IDCZ on goods and services that require tendering processes.

On February, 14, 2023, Kunze without the knowledge and consent of Collin Mutingwende, the CEO of Sunway City (Pvt) drafted a letter with a Sunway City (Pvt) Ltd letterhead and extracted an electronic signature for Mutingwende then pasted it on the signature block of the document which he generated.

After forging the letter, he ordered the procurement manager, Vimbiso Chikwereti to deliver the forged letter together with the procurement records for the two vehicles to PRAZ.

Paragraph 3, of the letter written to PRAZ by Kunze, stated that “please note that the said two vehicles are not service vehicles. Same were not procured for the Acting General Manager and or board Chairperson but for the Industrial Development Corporation of Zimbabwe”.

This was contrary to the IDCZ internal requisition December, 23, 2021 which specifically requested for domestic competitive tender invitation for the supply and delivery of a diesel motor vehicle 4X4 SUV for Acting General manager, E Tome.

By writing to PRAZ informing them that the vehicles had not been bought for the general manager and that they were not service vehicles, he sought to obstruct or to defeat the course of justice in that, PRAZ would then give its opinion based on incorrect information thereby exonerating the acting general manager from liability.

During the course of investigations, it was established that Mutingwende did not generate the letter which was sent to PRAZ with his signature but that it was Kunze who forged it.

It was further established that Kunze also generated another letter with the same contents on the IDCZ letterhead for the other vehicle a Ford Raptor which was purchased as an executive pool vehicle and he signed the letter.

Muchuchuti-Guwuriro ordered Kunze to pay ZWL$100 000 bail.

Kunze will appear in court on May, 3, 2023 for routine remand.