Fraudsters generate Zesa tokens

POWER utility Zesa could be losing revenue to fraudsters working in cahoots with its employees who are illegally generating electricity tokens and then sell them to the public.

Some Zesa employees have been allegedly manipulating the system, generating and selling electricity tokens to customers without declaring the proceeds to the power utility company.

It is understood that some of the workers were manipulating the system to allow their agents to sell tokens and not remitting the money to Zesa.

Last week police arrested a Zesa employee and his agent for allegedly illegally generating electricity tokens and selling them to customers without the knowledge of the power utility company.

Police arrested Darlington Chiputura (41) a ZESA employee at the company’s headquarters in Harare together with his agent Joseph Wagusiwa (36) from Kadoma for allegedly illegally generating and selling electricity tokens.

National police spokesperson, Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi confirmed the arrest of the two suspects following a tip off.

“I can confirm that police have arrested Joseph Wagusiwa and Darlington Chiputura for fraud. Wagusiwa was arrested in Kadoma after a trap was set and a Zesa electricity token valued at ZWL$ 1 680 was recovered.

The token had been sold to a potential client through a fraudulent system manipulation in the Zesa electricity data process.

Wagusiwa then implicated Chiputura who was responsible for generating the tokens at Zesa headquarters in Harare and supplied them to the first suspect for sale to the public for their own benefit,” he said.

It is alleged that some of the employees would manipulate the Zesa token system to create a parallel system that allows agents to sell electricity, illegally accessing the Zesa electricity database.

-Sunday News