Gono Continues To Plunder Public & Private Funds

Each day we read of how Gideon Gono has helped himself to foreign currency accounts belonging to various mines, companies and individuals - and today we discover that he has fleeced the University of Zimbabwe.

Mugabe will say that Gono is 'no thief' because the money is needed in the 'national interest'...

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"The University of Zimbabwe is battling to recover nearly US$5 million in research funds looted from its foreign currency account by the central bank during the country's economic crisis.

Meanwhile, the institution has frozen intakes in some departments as the country's brain drain takes its toll - and a nationwide lecturer strike at public universities continues.

The highest paid lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe earns US$290 a month, far short of the salaries of up to US$2,000 paid to other academics in the region. Following a decade-long political and economic crisis the government said it could only afford a pay increase of $17 a month to state employees, most of whom earn less than $200 a month.

When state coffers were empty during the economic crisis, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe raided private accounts in a bid to prop up the regime of long-time ruler President Robert Mugabe, threatened with collapse because of rising opposition and targeted sanctions. A number of universities lost funds this way.

A recent parliamentary report said University of Zimbabwe lecturers had sourced US$4.71 million from donors for research activities. But the money had been looted by the central bank and had still not been returned. The report called on the bank to reimburse the money."

Gono and Mugabe will ignore the calls for the money to be repaid, and will allow the case to go to court and then they will await a court order - and then, just maybe, the money might be returned.

I am of the belief that Gono and Mugabe are complicit in this theft and it is apparent that not only will the money not be returned, but that the money was not used in the 'national interest'. If that was the case, would ZANU PF have thrown a half million dollar birthday extravaganza for their geriatric leader?

ZANU PF politicians and apologists have much to say about the diamond fields and the riches that await Zimbabwe, but the country has yet to realise even a few thousand dollars of those rich pickings. The money never seems to find it way into State coffers - whilst Mugabe continues to spend money like it is water, even though both his party and the State are reportedly broke.

They cannot claim that the money was needed to keep the economy going when they waste huge amounts of money - most of it donated or forcibly 'given' - on idiocy like a birthday party...

Perhaps the strangest thing of all is that whilst Gono and Mugabe claim that the money taken from the accounts illegally was in the ‘national interest’ we see no sign of the spending of that money for the national good.

Theft is theft - nothing more, nothing less.

Robb WJ Ellis

The Bearded Man