Harare ‑ The Zimbabwean opposition politician and former energy and power development minister, Elton Mangoma, who was arrested on charges of criminal abuse of office, appeared in court on Tuesday.
On Monday, Mangoma was arrested together with two other ZESA Holdings officials by the country’s anti-corruption unit, the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC), They spent the night at Malbereign police cells.
The former MDC-T member, ZESA chief executive officer Josh Chifamba and Zesa Enterprise managing director Tererai Mutasa appeared before Magistrate Ruramai Chitumbura, who released them on $1 000 bail each.
They were ordered to surrender their passports, report to the police once a week, and to continue residing at their given addresses until the finalisation of the matter.
The case was postponed to January 29.
Mangoma, Chifamba and Mutasa are accused of awarding a switchgear contract to a South Korean company in October 2011 without going to tender. As a result, the State contends, the power utility was prejudiced of $850 000.
The State alleged that then, Mangoma connived with Chifamba to "unlawfully and intentionally do that which was contrary to or inconsistent with his duties as a public officer by approving a business plan on the proposed switch gear technology transfer agreement between Techpro Company of South Korea and ZESA Enterprises a subsidiary of ZESA Holdings without going through the tender procedures for the purpose of avoiding competitive bidding process thereby showing favour to Techpro Company of South Korea”.