Scandal-ridden NetOne holds AGM

Harare- SCANDAL ridden State owned mobile network operator (MNO) NetOne is holding it’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) Wednesday, with pending corruption cases being part of the matters under discussion.

Express Mail Zim understands that the ongoing AGM is being held virtually .

Inside sources said some of the proposals include evicting former chief executive Lazarus Muchenje from the Borrowdale house that he has been clinging to since 2020.

The parastatal is seized with corruption cases that are sub judice and yet to reach finality for the past two years.

Lately, NetOne has been experiencing network challenges amid reports that forex crisis has forced the state entity to default payments for optic cables since they use the Tel One platform.

“Forex crisis resulted in the company delaying to pay Tel One since they use optic fibres on that platform.
“Tel One was recently abuzz with announcement of vandalism and it was all a public relations stunt,”said our impeccable source.

The company has been haunted by corruption since the Reward Kangai era.

In 2020, Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission (Zacc) and the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Serious Frauds Unit preffered seven criminal charges against the former boss Muchenje and seven others.

The eight accused persons had their day in court but the matters are yet to reach finality ,two years down the line.

Muchenje faced charges of “Criminal abuse of duty as a public officer defined in section 174(1)(a) of the criminal law, alternatively contravention of section 4 of the postal and telecommincations(International telecommunications rates.”

“Count four, five, six and seven: Fraud as defined in section 136 of the criminal law.”

Despite this being a financial scam which benefited the NetOne bosses, insiders said the interconnection deal that the bosses entered into allowed foreigners to access private information of the locals without being detected.

According to the State “The contract signed between the accused representing NetOne as its chief executive office and Bankai International (Pvt) Limited had no board approval.

“Sometime in the year 2019 accused one, accused two and accused three held several meetings with Parag Agarwal a director of Bankai(PVT) Limited, a Mauritious corporation. Parag Agarwal purpoted to be representing 6D (Pvt) Limited, an Indian Company. 6D (Pvt) Limited had supplied Netone with a service delivery platform and USSD server gateway and was owed US$1 000 000-00 by Netone.
Parag Agarwal proposed to the accused persons that Netone should Provide (09) million minutes of on netvoice termimination service to Bankai (Pvt) LIMITED.

“The (09) million minutes were of a total cost of US1 000 000-00 having been valued at an interconnection rate of us$0.13 per minute. The interconnection rate of US$0.13 per minute is against the interconnection rate stipulated in section 4 of the postal and Telecommunications (International Telecommunications Rates) Amendment S.I 163 of 2008 which states that no license shall agree to receive less than the minimum internanational termination rate of US$0.20. Bankai would pay for the on-net voice terminations by offsetting the debt owed to 6 D Pvt Limited by Netone.”