Victory for Vela in NSSA case

Fidelis Munyoro

The Constitutional Court has quashed a Supreme Court ruling which upheld a forensic audit report linking former National Social Security Authority chairperson, Robin Vela to alleged corruption at the State- run pension fund.

In March 2019, BDO Zimbabwe Chartered accountants, after having been contracted by Auditor-General Mildred Chiri to carry out a forensic audit on NSSA, released a damning report, which implicated Vela in several cases of corruption.

The former NSSA boss applied for a review of the audit report and won the matter at the High Court after arguing that the findings were biased, incompetent and were targeted at him.
But BDO Zimbabwe and the Auditor General successfully appealed to the Supreme Court. Today a full bench of the Constitutional Court reversed the Supreme Court ruling and ordered a fresh hearing by different judges.

“As agreed to by the full bench of this court, the operative part of the judgement, in the exercise of the court’s powers as stated in section 19 of the court’s rules, the judgement in the supreme court in SC 61/22 be and is hereby set aside,” read part of the apex court’s judgement delivered by Justice Paddington Garwe.