Engineer Muserere acquitted.

Justice Amy Tsanga yesterday acquitted City of Harare engineer Simon Muserere and 7 others in a case where they were facing charges of corruptly awarding a tender to a certain company without following tender procedures thereby prejudicing the council of around 32 million dollars.

It was the state case that sometime in April 2010 up until 2011 the city council officials including the then town clerk Tendai Mahachi and some councillors awarded a tender to a non registered company called ERAC to rehabilitate sewage works in Harare. They were alleged to have done so without following the tender manual and set procedures.

In their defence, the officials claimed that they had followed provisions of the Urban Councils Act which allowed for selective tendering process to be done in the case of an emergency. They said there was an emergency of a cholera outbreak which could not be ignored until the proper tender procedures, which could take years had been done. They said they had opted for a more expeditious and speedy remedy of selective tender.

The case attracted a lot of interest and the long awaited judgement was handed down yesterday at the High court in Harare. In her ruling, judge Amy Tsanga stated that there was not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused persons had acted in connivance to award the tender without following due process. She then acquitted all 8 accused persons.

The accused persons had earlier on applied for a discharge at the end of the state case which had been dismissed by the learned judge. However after having wrapped up the defence case late last year, the judge acquitted the accused persons.