Bank official swindles teachers of $4 600

SIX Harare teachers allegedly lost a total of $4 600 to a local building society bank loan officer who clandestinely applied for the teachers, loans with his bank after forging their payslips and national identification cards.

The suspect, Shadreck Chikwavaire, of Zengeza 1 in Chitungwiza, is alleged to have acted in cahoots with Tafadzwa Mutepfa, who is still at large, to defraud the Ministry of Education employees through the loan scam.

Chikwavaire appeared before provincial magistrate Tendai Mahwe on Wednesday this week charged with six counts of fraud and was remanded out of custody to September 26 on $50 bail.

According to the State papers, Chikwavaire was employed as a loans officer by CABS and his duties included, among others, processing of loan applications from applicants and presenting them to Salary Service Bureau (SSB) for vetting.

And, in the event that the applications would have succeeded, Chikwavaire would then create an account for the applicants in the CABS system and issue a text-card which would be linked to CABS Bank and thereafter the applicants would access their cash from CABS ATMs or at any various points in selected shops.

The State alleges, during the period extending from June to July this year, Chikwavaire and Mutepfa devised a plan to defraud the bank by fraudulently manufacturing payslips and national identity cards of different teachers purporting that they had applied for loans.

The affected teachers are Simbarashe Gomo, Simbarashe Mufusire, Makanyara Fostila, Rufaro Chawatama, Ephraim Zivanai and Verengai Chiwashira from various schools.

It is alleged Chikwavaire processed the six applications and forwarded them to SSB for vetting and deduction purposes.

The State further alleges the applications were successful resulting in the CABS transferring a total of $4 600 into purported text-card accounts which Chikwavaire had access to.

However, the offence came to light when the teachers queried the deductions from their salaries prompting the bank to carry out its own investigations into the matter leading to the discovery of the offence.

As a result, the bank refunded the teachers a total of $4 600 and the alleged whole misrepresentation by Chikwavaire and his colleague caused the bank to suffer a total prejudice of $9 200.