Former board chairperson for the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) Alexander Kusamba Dzonzi says the Corporation needs to through a complete forensic audit to establish facts about fraudulent activities that have been happening at the state produce trader.
Dzonzi’s proposal comes amid findings by an audit report by Graham Carr which revealed that Admarc lost K330 million through the vehicle and medical insurance fraud between 2020 to 2022.
“Admarc paid K1.5 million for Staff who are deceased, paid K6.7 million for Staff who left Admarc and the Corporation paid K7.5 million for non-staff. It was free for all. Taxes paying medical cover and insuring cars for someone’s girlfriend, very pathetic,” said Dzonzi.
However, Dzonzi who appeared before a parliamentary committee investigating various issues of mis procurement and mismanagement of public resources, admitted that billions of Kwachas could have been lost through various fraudulent deals from 2000s.
Meanwhile, Treasury has disclosed that it was not involved in the decision to close down Admarc despite being a major shareholder.
“As Treasury as shareholder we were not involved on the decision in the first place to make the decision to send the staff members on holiday,” reported Macdonald Mafuta Mwale, Secretary to the Treasury.
On her part, the joint Committee’s co-chairperson Gladys Ganda said the recently uncovered insurance fraud is a good example of how worse the mess is at Admarc.
He said: “The overall impression is that indeed three is an issue to do with insurance fraud at Admarc, but it’s also clear that there is a mess at Admarc.
“Because it doesn’t make sense for Admarc to be ensuring vehicles for people that don’t work for Admarc.”
The report exposed that K39.5 million was paid for insurance for personal vehicles belonging to Admarc employees and the money is yet to be recovered.
According to the audit report, the Statutory Corporation also paid K39 million for 12 personal cars belonging to Gerald Ganizani who owns a car hire, K808, 915 insurance for non Admarc Staff and K18.8 million for non-runner vehicles.
