Cde Honest Vhura Hombe

A leaked letter has exposed a US$4.2 million payment from the Ministry of Finance to Betterbrands Petroleum, a company owned by gold dealer and ZANU PF MP Scott Sakupwanya.

The money came straight from the Treasury’s USD Tax Nostro account, an account usually reserved for important things like paying off foreign debts, not topping up your politically connected friend’s fuel fund.

This transaction revealed all the juicy details, including account numbers, dates, and, apparently, none of the legal steps usually required when moving millions in public funds.

It’s the kind of banking flexibility most Zimbabweans can only dream of while they’re arguing with ZESA over a $12 top-up that disappeared into the ether.

Tendai Biti, the former Finance Minister and resident legal adult in the room, wasn’t amused.

He called the payment both “illegal and unlawful,” adding that the Ministry is supposed to disburse funds through proper channels, like Parliament.

Instead, this payment flew through backdoors like a bat out of a dodgy procurement hell.

This isn’t Sakupwanya’s first time winning a murky tender shrouded in secrecy.

Back in 2022, his company reportedly scored a duty-free deal to supply 50 million litres of diesel for the Presidential Borehole Drilling Programme, again, without going through a competitive process.

Apparently, when it’s for “clean water,” anything goes, including giving fuel contracts to a jewellery company turned fuel importer.

Yes, Betterbrands Petroleum is the fuel-slinging cousin of Better Brands Jewellery.

Makes perfect sense in the same way a crocodile makes sense as a national symbol of wisdom.

ZIMRA, the tax authority, was roped in to help facilitate diesel imports under this grand “national project,” while government departments cc’d themselves into irrelevance.

All of it was wrapped up in bureaucratic language, dripping with phrases like “ring-fencing” and “administrative modalities”—the kind of terms officials use when they’re doing something they hope no one understands until it’s too late.

Meanwhile, Zimbabweans are being told to tighten their belts, pay their taxes, and smile through the inflation, while their leaders swipe millions on a political fuel card with no expiry date.