FORMER Finance Minister Tendai Biti has launched a scathing attack on his successor Patrick Chinamasa, describing the Zanu PF ministerial appointee as the biggest bank robber the country has ever seen.
Biti said at a policy dialogue forum at Dr Ibbo Mandaza’s SAPES Trust recently that Chinamasa had abandoned all economic fundamentals and raided bank accounts to prop up President Robert Mugabe’s faltering regime.
He accused Chinamasa of conniving with Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya to raid bank accounts and of ordering the repatriation of Nostro bank balances to be squandered by the government back in Zimbabwe.
Biti said the current government has been raiding RTGS balances since April 2014.
The PDP leader accused Chinamasa of transferring the government account from CBZ where there was better accountability, to the central bank where the Finance Minister and Mangudya were allegedly conniving to issue what he said could now be $3 billion worth of “toxic” treasury bills.
“There is a myth that we are in a cash crunch because people are externalising,” Biti said.
“What has happened is that we have had a bank heist, a bank robbery at the central bank and that robber is Patrick Chinamasa who has been raiding these RTGS balances from the system.”
Biti said Chinamasa and Mangudya had now turned to raiding export proceeds.
“It’s not enough that they are stealing that which is already in the system; they are also stealing income that is accruing to us in terms of export proceeds.
“They have been issuing treasury bills like confetti.”
He added: “They have been issuing treasury bills to finance their recurrent expenditure. When President Mugabe goes to Singapore, he is taking at least US$6 million which is somewhat being financed by a very narrow revenue base.”
Biti said government’s $500 million input command agriculture scheme was being financed through treasury bills adding that the same government had no clue on the total stock of treasury bills it had issued so far.
“The Ministry of Finance has become a nominal ministry; there has been state capture of the Ministry of Finance by the office of the OPC (Office of the President and Cabinet) which euphemism of junta, Mnangagwa and Lacoste, that horrible politics…just two people are doing this, Chinamasa and his friend (Mangudya),” he said.
The former MDC-T secretary general and lawyer also said Zimbabwe’s deepening economic crisis was far from being a by-product of objective economic difficulties but that of “subjective challenges of government dishonesty”.
“How does a self-respecting minister actually go and steal people’s monies that are in RGTS balances? I don’t understand it!
“And when you are a lawyer for that matter who knows the law! There is no provision in our law that allows a government to maintain an overdraft with the Reserve Bank; it’s not there at all.”
Biti said government was living beyond its means and was abusing public funds to finance party programmes such as President Mugabe’s million dollar march earlier this year and conferences.
“You have a group of men and women who are not afraid of other people’s assets. When I did criminal law, I was taught that if you take something without someone’s consent, its theft.
“I have a problem with Patrick and his colleagues because they are cynical; they have no respect for rules, they have no morality at all and that’s why we are in this crisis. We are run by a bunch of thugs without respect to rules, principles or morality.
“How do you go to a shop like SeedCo and issue a treasury bill that you know it is not even worth the paper that it is printed on.”