OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Thursday 4.00pm.
THE Zimbabwean central bank on Thursday produced a damning report on black banker Roger Boka, and blames the government of bending banking licensing procedures to allow his underfunded bank to operate in the first place.
The report into the collapse of Boka’s “indigenous” United Merchant Bank accuses Boka of funnelling over $21-million into personal foreign bank accounts before he fled to the United States in the wake of his empire’s collapse in July.
Boka, who was a vitriolic champion of the affirmative-action (“indigenisation”) lobby, operated his bank with “total disregard of laws, rules and regulations,” the Reserve Bank said. “Funds were lost through poor lending, insider loans, externalisation of funds and gross mismanagement. Depositors’ funds were abused and fraud was committed,” the report, prepared by Reserve Bank governor Leonard Tsumba, said.
The report further said that Boka should, in fact, never have been allowed to operate a bank in the first place. “At registration [in 1992], UMB failed to meet the minimum licensing requirements such as management, shareholding structure and minimum capital injection but was nonetheless licenced. It is clear that licensing standards were bent to accommodate an otherwise underserving applicant,” the report said. Banking licences are issued by the government.
Attorney-General Patrick Chinamasa said if he is convinced after receiving police dockets that Boka had a case to answer, he will call for his return to face charges.