Rainbow Hotel defrauded of $41 846

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AN FBC Information desk officer has been dragged to court for conniving with the Bulawayo Rainbow Hotel employee to defraud the hospitality institution of $41 846.

AN FBC Information desk officer has been dragged to court for conniving with the Bulawayo Rainbow Hotel employee to defraud the hospitality institution of $41 846.

BY SILAS NKALA

Oscar Zindi (30) of Lobengula who was employed by FBC Bank as Information Desk Officer pleaded not guilty to fraud when he appeared before Bulawayo senior magistrate Gladmore Mushove.

He was represented by lawyer Tanaka Muganyi.

The magistrate remanded him to July 3 for continuation of trial. He is out of custody.

The state represented by Simbarashe Manyiwa called a state witness Samson Chitsato who represented Rainbow Hotel who said they discovered the anomaly after conducting an audit and sought bank statement from the FBC Bank.

He said Zindi an employee at Rainbow Hotel Fundie Mageza who is at large would collect the money from daily cash and instead of banking the whole of it he would bank part of it and divert part of it to his own use. He said he would then file some bank slips which showed that all the money was bank and those slips where having an authentic bank date stamp.

“We then went to the bank to ask for the bank statement concerning our accounts and that is when we discovered that the amount which was bank was less than the amount which was reflecting in out accounts,” said Chitsato.

The court heard that sometime in February 2014 Zindi connived with Mageza who is still at large to defraud the Rainbow Hotel Bulawayo of money.

On different 26 days Zindi would stamp fake deposit slips of different amounts purporting that he had credited the amounts. In the process the Rainbow Hotel lost $41 846.

The matter came to light when auditors from Harare visited the FBC bank and asked for a bank statement. FBC confirmed that the stamp on the bank slips were its and was used by Zindi who had not been authorized to collect cash from clients.

A report made to the police led to Zindi’s arrest while his alleged accomplice Mageza is still at large.

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