ZIMRA Director falsified qualifications to get the top Job

One of the bosses at the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority has been rumbled with forged qualifications after 13 years in the job.

Director of Loss Control Mr Charlton Chihuri only has four Ordinary Level subjects, auditors appointed by the Auditor-General’s Office have established.

“Our investigations revealed that Mr Charlton Chihuri misrepresented his academic qualifications to Zimra as early as 2003 when he first applied for the post of Loss Control Officer,” reads the report.

“He misrepresented that he had obtained six Ordinary Level passes, scored six Advanced Level points and that he was the legitimate holder of a Bachelor of Science Honours in Economics Degree with the University of Zimbabwe.

“Upon inquiry with both the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council and the University of Zimbabwe, we established that he had misrepresented his results.

“He neither has six Ordinary Level passes nor does he hold any degree with the University of Zimbabwe. In actual fact, he has only four Ordinary Level passes excluding English, and he failed his Advanced Level examinations with two F symbols and an O symbol.”

The auditors said the UZ also refuted claims that Mr Chihuri was ever registered at the institution and categorically stated that the degree certificate that he presented to Zimra was fictitious. The auditors said Mr Chihuri’s record file with the revenue authority contained a Master’s degree with the University of Liverpool, which the auditors queried its legitimacy given that one cannot obtain a Master’s without an undergraduate qualification.

“Mr Charlton Chihuri even failed the Zimra training tests for supervisors and managers scoring two F symbols for Tariff and Procedure 1 respectively. Ironically, he was being showered with performance awards every quarter by the Commissioner-General Mr Gershem Pasi.

“The role of director Loss Control is crucial and cannot be efficiently executed by an unsuited candidate. The authority was prejudiced to the tune of US$1,6 million in remuneration paid to an unqualified person.

“It was surely upon the leadership at Zimra to put in place measures to detect such cases of academic fraud. These measures were not there and if they existed, they were not effective enough to prevent or detect the academic fraud.

Source: Online