Zinara engages lawyers to terminate stinking US$70 million Santanar deal

Harare- THE new Zinara executives have engaged lawyers to have a non-litigious termination of the controversial US$70 million Santanah deal , Express Mail Zim can report.

The new team lead by chairman George Manyaya and chief executive Nkosinathi Ncube made the revelations Monday when they appeared before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) to appraise same on progress made in addressing findings and reccomendations from the Grant Thornton forensic audit in 2016.

Marondera central legislator Casten Matewu who also sits in the commitee, bemoaned the contract via his social media platforms.

The stinking deal that the new team is putting concerted efforts to legally cancel involves a company called Golden Roads, initially called Santanah.

The ‘two-faced’ company was contracted by Zinara in a deal supritended by former chief executive Frank Chitukutuku.

Under the contract, they were obliged to play an advisory function of Golden Roads to Zinara/Infralink since 2009.

Santanah promised Zinara to open lines of credit, funding facilities and available to Zimbabwe funds for infrastructure projects.

Santanah was reportedly paid for securing a US$206 million loan from DBSA for years project.

It further engaged Group Five for the construction of the highway.
As a result, it charged 3% of draw down and included in the loan a yearly administration fee of 2% on the gross value.

Upon attaining the levers of power, the new Zinara team immediately halted payments to Santanah, and with the support of the Transport ministry asked for justification of the payments in 2020.

The only sticking issue is the legality of the development that has forced Zinara to engage lawyers and get counsel on how to terminate the contract without any legal boobs.

“This issue was raised in the 2016 forensic report and all those employeess implicated have left the company, while some have resigned,” said Ncube.

Zacc is also seized with the matter which is being investigated under reference number RR86/09/19, and the Court Ref. No is ACC77/99.

Express Mail Zim understands that Zinara has managed to address over 90 percent of the Grant Thornton forensic audit reccomendations.

The procurement system has underwent a complete overhaul and departmental committees have been set up to improve transparency.

The parastatal has been dogged with controversy and the new management has a mammoth task to sweep the dirt.