Men defraud CABS of ZWL8m

Michael Mashiri
Two Hatcliffe men who are alleged to have defrauded CABS more than ZWL$8 million between 2019 and 2020 have appeared before magistrate Dennis Mangosi.

Elijah Mugidho, 51, and Patrick Nyamusangodza, 40, both of Hatcliffe were before the Harare Magistrates’ Courts accused of fraud.

The complainant in the matter is Central African Building Society represented by Sinikiwe Mukondiwa.

The State, through prosecutor ZebediahBofu, alleges that, during the period between 2019 and 2020, Mugidho who was employed by CABS as executive kitchen chef and Nyamusangodza who is the director of Mbeko’s Cleaners, a company that supplies cleaning material to CABS figured a way of stealing from CABS.

The Mugidho would create purchase orders to Nyamusangodza, who would in turn create invoices to the complainant purporting as if he had supplied goods.

Mugidho would then take the purchase orders and the invoices to CBZ’s finance department for approval of payment to the purported supplier being Nyamusangodza. .

All items which Mugidho claimed to have purchased from Nyamasangodza were never delivered to the CABS.

The offence was discovered after the finance department noted that Mugidho was now processing payment to Nyamusangodza with similar orders after every two weeks and raised a concern with the Mugidho's supervisor.

Mugidho's supervisor then analyzed the invoices and noted that the invoices raised had been approved and signed by other senior managers, showing that Mugidho had deliberately avoided her because he knew that they had already purchased the items.

All previous invoices raised by Mugidho were retrieved and it was noted that all invoices were being raised twice a month with the same number of items but there was no evidence that the goods were delivered.

Nyamusangodza’s CABS account bank statement was checked and it noted that transfers were being made into Mugidho’s personal CABS bank account number soon after Nyamusangodza’s bank account had been credited with funds from CABS for the invoices raised.

As a result of the two’s actions CABS lost ZWL$8 187 878 and nothing was recovered.

The two were ordered to pay ZWL$200 000 bail. They will appear in court on July 4, for their routine remand.