Harare — AICO Africa Limited has appointed Patrick Devenish as its new chief executive officer to replace former CEO, Happymore Mapara who left AICO last month after a fall out with the board over allegations of cosmetic accounting unearthed in the group's financial accounts.

Mr Devenish's appointment takes effect from the beginning of next month. Before his new appointment Mr Devenish was Seed Co Group CEO.

Seed Co, as a consequence of the departure of Mr Devenish, has appointed former group financial director Mr Morgan Nzwere, the new CEO. Mr Nzwere's appointment is also effective January 1 2010.

"Patrick has been appointed to the position of group chief executive - AICO Africa Limited. His appointment takes effect on 1 January 2010 and he takes over from Mr Happymore Mapara who left the group on 30 November 2009," said AICO in a statement.

Group auditors, KPMG, discovered Mr Mapara's alleged creative accounting in the company's financials, which violated exchange control rules.

AICO claimed Mr Mapara was leaving the group amicably to pursue private business. However, Mr Mapara was allegedly forced to exit the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed conglomerate following revelations management at the firm devised cunning ways to circumvent exchange control rules at the height of the economic crisis last year.

The former AICO boss was accused of heading a management team that formed foreign-based companies to facilitate transactions with Western countries that had imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe. The companies were cited as Yucatan Holdings Limited and Salamax Trading Limited.

Yucatan Holdings was allegedly used to settle AICO's cash obligations from South Africa while excess cash was repatriated to Zimbabwe.

On the other hand, Salamax, a wholly owned subsidiary of Yucatan, was used for purposes of procuring products for AICO.

It is alleged that Salamax received full financial support from AICO, but contributed almost nothing to the local group's revenue. AICO's auditors also discovered that Salamax was operated and controlled by only a single director in addition to other irregularities relating to the firm's registration as well as its operations.

In addition, AICO operated a company known as Zambrano Investments established to carry out speculative business on the ZSE.

AICO was also implicated in transactions relating to vehicle procurement for two employees of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. However, Mr Mapara was quoted in the media refuting allegations of creative accounting at the firm and claimed his ouster was plotted by staff members peeved by certain decisions he had taken at the group.

The former AICO boss claimed certain staff who used to supply goods to AICO under pseudo names were angered when he engaged new suppliers. The AICO board has also announced new appointments for AICO and its wholly owned subsidiary, the Cotton Company of Zimbabwe.

Mr David Machingaidze has been appointed the new managing director of Cottco while Mr Andrew Nyakonda has been appointed the new group audit manager for AICO Africa Limited.

Mr Nyakonda used to be with Barclays Bank of Zimbabwe and has also worked for CBZ Bank, Delta Corporation and Unilever while Mr Machingaidze was managing director of United Builders Merchants. He was previously with the Tobacco Sales Floor.