HARARE – Former Information Communication Technology minister Supa Mandiwanzira was on Wednesday acquitted on one of the two charges of criminal abuse of office brought by prosecutors.
Trial magistrate Elijah Makomo rejected the Nyanga South MP’s application for exception to charges that he awarded a US$5 million contract to a South African company without going to tender, which led him to appeal to the High Court.
Mandiwanzira also faced a second charge relating to the appointment of his personal assistant, Tawanda Chinembiri, a civil servant at director level, to the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Potraz) board and Universal Services Fund in violation of corporate governance principles. The charge was upheld, and Mandiwanzira will stand trial at the lower court.
Justice Nicholas Mathonsi, sitting at the Harare High Court, quashed the first charge after finding that the decision to engage Megawatt Energy was done with Cabinet approval.
The charge arose after former NetOne CEO Reward Kangai, on June 26, 2013, signed a network expansion and modernisation of equipment deal with Chinese firm Huawei Technologies to the value of US$219 million. The deal was to be financed through a loan from China Exim Bank secured through the Finance Ministry, then headed by Patrick Chinamasa.
Mandiwanzira would later question the deal, and prosecutors said he on January 19, 2015, directed NetOne to engage Megawatt Energy, a South African company owned by Lui Xiadong, to carry out an audit on the Huawei deal for $5 million. His lawyers argued, however, that the agreement was pro bono.
Mandiwanzira’s lawyer argued that the audit resulted in NetOne recovering US$30 million that it had overpaid in the deal.
Prosecutors had also painted an inappropriate relationship between Mandiwanzira and Megawatt, charging that the minister jointly owned a property in Johannesburg with Megawatt through his company, Blue Nightingale.
