Business Reporter
LISTED financial services group, ZBFH has been accused of allegedly favoring themselves by paying below the market rentals at the properties owned by the pension fund division.
A letter written by the ZBFH Group Pensioners Association addressed to the ZBFH chairman laid bare serious allegations bordering on conflict of interest and milking pensioners decades long hard earned sweat.
The pensioners have since bemoaned that they are receiving monthly premiums as low as US$2 per month.
“We have now taken the liberty to hereby bring to the attention of the Regulator Insurance and Pensions Commission (IPEC) of the rental scandal by the Bank involving our Pension Fund properties to which the Bank is tenant. It was our sincere hope and trust that this rental scandal would be kept under wraps to avoid bad publicity and hopefully afford an opportunity for an amicable in-house resolution.
“It does not need a rocket scientist to reveal that there is an incestuous relationship between the Bank and the unfortunate Pension Fund whereby the former has been the sole beneficiary through the payment of suppressed and sub-economic rentals for decades while the latter has been milked financially through the rental scandal and has been brought to its knees financially,” the pensioners alleged.
The pensioners contend that ZBFH has been the greatest undoing on their investments since this incestuous relationship has stifled the ZB Pension Fund growth over the years.
The Pension Fund Chairman is also accused of letting the bank enjoy ‘free rentals ‘ under the guise that the latter is the only reliable tenant available.
“ It is now on record that the Chairman’s earlier claim on 28 July 2023 that the Bank was paying market rates supported by regular professional valuations turned out to be false according to available evidence already furnished to you after it had been presented/ tabled at one of the Board’s recent meetings.
If the Chairman of the Board of Trustees can do this what more about those he presides over who are mere employees for that matter. So who can be trusted? We are amazed that not one Trustee ever raised an eyebrow while this abuse of pension fund properties was going on for decades,” the letter reads in part.
The pensioners grouping are also questioning the composition of the fund’s board of trustees arguing it tilted towards protecting the interests of the bank over them after raising the allegation of the existence of seven active employees against just one pensioner.
They allege the bank has stifled millions of dollars through this illicit practice over the years saying such loopholes are rooted in visible conflict of interest where the Pension Fund chairman serves dual roles as Employer representative with a casting vote.
Best practice, the pensioners said, demands that where there is direct conflict of interest ethically one should recuse himself has but such has not been heard of .
“It’s simply a skewed and unworkable structure where transparency is intrinsically impossible to achieve. This must surely change for the sake of transparency. The level of high handedness and baseless pride by these officials says it all because they know they can do it with impunity.
“Like a sheep to the slaughter, our Pension Fund has been left under the custody of this Board of Trustees of disinterested actives (the Chairman included) who have reduced it to a financial intensive care patient,” the letter said.
The pensioners have blamed such structures as the chief cause behind paltry pension payments they are and receiving.
They allege that over the years the Fund’s constitution has been tempered with and amended without following due procedures and prior consultations.
“We recently queried the Board’s unilateral decision to change the Fund from Defined Benefit (DB) to Defined Contribution (DC) and got a shocking response that prior consultation was done yet there is no record of prior consultation on our emails.
“So it means that this unilateral and arbitrary system of decision making of these actives’ Board of Trustees is not new but decades old. We therefore call upon IPEC to investigate this scandal as we are seriously considering appealing to higher Authorities,” the letter added.
Efforts to get a comment on the matter from the ZBFH spokes, Emilia Mabika were fruitless as numerous emails and phone calls went unanswered for more than two months.
