Sikhumbuzo Moyo Senior Sports Reporter
ZIFA executive committee member in charge of finance Philimon Machana last night laughed off claims by senior finance employees that the association did not bank Sunday’s gate takings from the African Cup of Nations qualifier against Malawi.

Machana instead described the claims as highly disrespectful and shocking.

In an unsigned statement released yesterday, purportedly from Zifa employees, the authors allege that “Machana collected $158,330 from the Zimbabwe vs Malawi match on behalf of Zifa, but the money was not banked”.

“Only Machana knows where he took the Zifa money to,” wrote the employees. The employees were disputing that they “stole” $23,000, which was part of money realised from gate takings on Sunday.

It emerged last night that the money, which was illegally taken by accountant Fabian Vanganayi on the instruction of finance manager Benjamin Dhewa, was actually meant for statutory requirements to Fifa, Caf and Zifa in affiliation fees.

According to an unedited version of the income and expenditure document seen by Chronicle Sport yesterday, Fifa’s two percent ($3,163.92) of the total gross income, Caf’s five percent ($2,909.80) and Zifa’s six percent ($9,491.76) as well as $1,125.25 in players’ tickets refunds was all “looted” by Vanganayi, who took the money to his house on the basis that it was supposed to be payment for salaries owed to employees.

“There was never such an instruction for the finance manager to take part of the proceedings for salaries. It is highly disrespectful if not shocking for them to make such claims,” said Machana last night.

He said it was the reason they reported the matter to police, (IR Number 060293).

Machana said it is the police that recovered the money from Vanganayi after waiting for him to finish his examinations at the University of Zimbabwe on Monday.

“The police went and recovered the money from his house, so it’s funny that they choose to deny that the money was illegally taken from the stadium,” said Machana.

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