Mukupe gets 3 years in jail

FORMER Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Development Terrence Mukupe and three accomplices were yesterday sentenced to three years in prison and fined US$12 780 each for evading customs duties on more than 138 000 litres of diesel.

A ZIMRA crack team at Chirundu Border Post smashed the scheme to evade customs duties in 2017 when they intercepted trucks owned by Mukupe and found that they were transporting water instead of diesel.

Mukupe was convicted along with drivers Sam Kapisoriso, Joseph Taderera and Leonard Mudzuto, for unlawfully importing diesel without paying duty.

The three drivers drove the tankers into Zimbabwe with diesel meant for the Democratic Republic of Congo, but replaced the fuel with water in Zimbabwe.

Justice Benjamin Chikowero initially slapped the four with three and half years each in jail but suspended six months on condition of good behaviour. In addition, the court ordered the four to pay a US$12 780 fine each, failure of which they will each serve two years’imprisonment.

In assessing the appropriate sentence, Justice Chikowero moved away from the presumptive two years, to impose the hefty penalty on the four, considering the serious consequences the crime had on the country’s economy and financial health and the need to deter organised crime operating across borders.

The case was in its seventh year when the trial began and the court expressed shock why the trial took long to open since “evidence was quickly gathered and the matter was simple and straight forward”.

And in his sentencing judgment, Justice Chikowero noted that the anguish and anxiety occasioned on the four awaiting trial was akin to some kind of mental imprisonment.

So, the court proceeded on the basis that had Mukupe and his accomplices been brought to trial in about 2017 and convicted, the sentence they would have received then would have been remarkably different from that which the court now imposed on them.