HEXILLIONS...GET READY FOR IT HERE

FROM THE ZIMBABWE TIMES: http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com/?p=7633 $60 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 fraud! November 20, 2008 By Our Correspondent HARARE - Reserve Bank Governor, Gideon Gono has frozen the accounts of eleven companies and nine individuals who have been involved in fraudulent cheque activities totaling Z$60 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 ($60 hexillion) over the past ten days which they deployed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange to bid for shares. This amount effectively dwarfs the $1, 1 hexillion that is the total of all quasi-fiscal operations the central bank has engaged in over the past five years. The accounts of nine individuals and directors of blacklisted companies were frozen while they were barred from opening any other banking accounts in Zimbabwe for “indiscipline, corruption, fraudulent activities and underhand manipulation of the money and capital markets”. Gono blamed rogue and fraudulent activities for the cash shortages that have forced depositors to sleep in queues outside commercial banks and building societies in order to withdraw the $50 000 proclaimed by the central bank as the maximum daily withdrawal limit. While the fraudulent activities in question have, in the words of Gono, taken place over the past 10 days, the bank queues that the Reserve Bank governor refers to have been in existence for months now. Gono made these shocking revelations as he put in place new measures to curb fraudulent banking activities and trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange which he said “had become the most devastating vehicle of economic destruction”. In the past, Gono has labelled inflation as the Number One enemy hampering his much talked about economic turn-around programme. His previous efforts have achieved little success in reining in inflation which is now currently pegged officially at 231 million percent “The current cash shortages are a combined effect of the rogue trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange,” Gono said. “Insurance companies have stoked the flames of financial instability through flouting of the statutes that govern their operations.” The central bank has immediately stopped entertaining unsecured accommodation from commercial banks and threatened to eject those who flout regulations out of the clearing houses. “Any banks or stock-broking firm which writes cheques that are not funded will have their accounts closed. Any bank where bank cheques are fraudulently drawn will automatically lose their trading licences and the CEO charged with criminality,” Gono said. For instance, one bank branch authorised a cheque that far exceeded the whole company’s assets put together. Some players in the banking sector had relaxed controls and risk management systems leading to officials engaging in corrupt activities, he said. Other proposed deterrent measures include penalizing a bank’s entire management and board of directors in cases where the bank does not report suspicious transactions that turn out to be fraudulent or money laundering proceeds and closing accounts for any stock broking companies that fail to settle their obligations on the ZSE register “The victims of these fraudulent activities are the hard-working workers going for months without access to their salaries at banks; the sick who cannot get treatment at hospitals and clinics due to lack of cash; the commuting public who fail to go from place to place because of rampant increases in transport costs and children having to go to school of empty stomachs and the disadvantaged members of society who can barely make end meet,” Gono said. Gono routinely uses populist excuses and lays blame on the banking sector to cover up for cases of clear mismanagement at the Reserve Bank.