The head of Zimbabwe’s main state grain marketing board has been arrested on graft charges, police said on Saturday, days after another top executive was jailed in a new drive against growing corruption.
President Robert Mugabe ordered a crackdown on graft last month to try to resolve Zimbabwe’s economic crisis, blamed by critics on his policies in the potentially-rich Southern African country he has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.
Police spokesperson Inspector Andrew Phiri said retired army colonel Samuel Muvuti, the acting chief executive officer of the Grain Marketing Board (GMB), was arrested on Friday on charges of defrauding the GMB of Z$950 000 ($3 800).
Phiri said Muvuti — who denies the charges — was accused of paying some of his private farm workers from the GMB salary coffers, and would soon face formal charges of corruption in the lower magistrate court.
On Monday, a Harare court sentenced the head of Zimbabwe’s state bus company to two years in jail for soliciting a $85 000 bribe to award a bus procurement tender.
It was the first high-profile conviction since Mugabe announced his new crackdown on graft in July.
Mugabe says rising corruption is threatening his government’s efforts to revive an economy in recession over the last eight years and which is now struggling with the world’s highest inflation rate of nearly 1 000%. – Reuters