The City of Harare has been rocked by a US$4 million scandal which has led to the arrest of its Chief Clerical Officer Emmanuel Dzinomurumbi.
Dzinomurumbi allegedly diverted payments from City Council to his own use amounting to US$4 276 156 and ZWL$60 044 496.
The court heard that Dzinomurumbi is employed as the chief clerical officer in the local currency office and his duties, among others, include authorising the reversing of erroneous transactions.
The Senior Clerical Officer receives a Proof of Payment from a customer physically or via email.
The officer’s role is to scrutinise the POP for all relevant information like account number to be credited, the paying bank and the date of payment.
These are then logged into the system.
The officer then creates a voucher that captures the reference number, transaction date, COH bank account, amount confirmed, description of customer name and bank details, name of processor, authoriser and date authorised
The officer prints the voucher, signs the voucher and gives the voucher to the Chief Clerical Officer, or any other independent officer, for authorisation.
The voucher is given to the customer, who then takes the voucher to the banking hall, for receipting.
In cases where there are errors, Dzinomurumbi, as the Chief Clerical officer, would then make the necessary corrections.
It is the State’s case that the City of Harare received the payments of ZWL$60 million and US$4million which Dzinomurumbi allegedly fraudulently reversed.
This made the amounts available into the system for reallocation without making journal adjustments to reverse the amount which would have been receipted.
After that, he would then fraudulently create receipting vouchers in favour of accounts which were not related to the details of the initial POP.
This was allegedly done without the knowledge of the depositor, misrepresenting to City of Harare that account holders had paid their amount due while he had received the money and used the money for personal benefit to the prejudice of City of Harare.
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