ZIMRA chief lifts lid on unbanked millionaires

Zvigananda in shady property deals and fuel empire evasions

**ZIMRA Commissioner General Regina Chinamasa before Parly**

ZimNow Reporter

Zimbabwe’s fuel stations are multiplying like mushrooms—and so are the loopholes fueling tax evasion, money laundering, and state revenue losses.

This was the strong implication in the no-holds-barred address by ZIMRA Commissioner General Regina Chinamasa when she appeared before Parliament’s Budget, Finance, and Investment Promotion Committee this week.

Chinamasa painted a worrying picture of two booming sectors—real estate and fuel—where millions change hands daily, but very little reaches the national purse.

She revealed that property sellers are increasingly using dual sale agreements to under-declare values to ZIMRA, depriving the treasury of significant revenue.

“Right now people are selling properties, and they’ve got two agreements—one for ZIMRA and one for themselves,” she said. “How do I prove a property was sold for US$630,000 when the agreement submitted says otherwise?”

But it doesn’t end there. She alleged complicity by some property evaluators who aid the fraud and warned that cash transactions are allowing untaxed millions to slip through the cracks.

“There are people who don’t even have a bank statement—but they’re millionaires,” Chinamasa charged.

The fuel sector came under fire for operating as an informal sector. Behind the fuel pumps, she suggested, lies a well-oiled and often untouchable machinery

Indeed, evidence that fuel dealers handle obscene amounts of money can be found in police crime logs, not tax ledgers. In one notorious case, US$600,000 in cash—allegedly from fuel sales—was stolen from a service station safe in Kwekwe, prompting questions about how such sums exist outside the banking system.

Another inside job, as Kwekwe US$600,000 robbers a...

Observers say such thefts are just the tip of the iceberg in an industry where the real fuel is cash—and lots of it. Most operators transact in hard currency but report little to nothing to the tax authority. The sector, Chinamasa noted, remains resistant to fiscalization, denying ZIMRA real-time access to transaction data.

To combat this, she called for urgent legal reforms: “Let them first give me the legal backing to say, if you are selling this, show me your bank statement. Where you deposit the money.”

Comparing Zimbabwe to Bali, Indonesia, where tax authorities act swiftly and decisively, she expressed frustration at the sluggish enforcement systems locally. “There, the commissioner sends his team today. You get results immediately. But here, there’s no physical location,” she said, hinting at the murky, elusive nature of local tax dodgers.

With Zimbabwe desperate to boost domestic revenue in the face of mounting social service demands and waning donor support, Chinamasa’s remarks serve to highlight the truth: the money is there—but it’s dodging the system.