MDC-T Secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora has continued with his barrage on the MDC Alliance Leadership claiming that some top party officials used their positions to strip the big opposition party of assets that include houses and vehicles.

Mwonzora confirmed to State Media that investigations are underway to establish what happened to the party’s so-called safe houses as well as vehicles that he claims were converted to personal use.

“Right now that is a matter that I would not want to discuss in detail but it is a matter that the leadership of the party is dealing with. The matter of embezzlement of the party funds and trying to strip the party of its assets. We are looking into this issue but we will advise at the appropriate time and take the issue to the police,” said Mr Mwonzora.

However, while addressing party structures over the weekend, Mwonzora said the party lost over US$23 million to some of its leaders who misled the late Mr Morgan Tsvangirai into believing that there would be a presidential election run-off and there was need for a resourced war chest to fund the polls.

“We didn’t know that the party had more than 150 vehicles but we have the paper trail and we are going to trace what happened to those vehicles. We are going to trace where our motorbikes are.

“We have people who left the party with more than US$23 million. This happened in 2013 when we were using the US dollar. So some people lied to Tsvangirai that there would be a run-off and they took the money to Botswana. After the election, Tsvangirai said can you take US$5 million from that stash to rebuild the party and they then started accusing him of being too old and suggested that they should be a leadership renewal. Those same people who lied to Tsvangirai and stole the party money now want to lead us,” said Mwonzora.

MDC Alliance secretary general Mr Chalton Hwende dismissed Mwonzora’s claims questioning why he ignored the matter when he was the party Secretary General for five years.

“He was the secretary general for five years. Why doesn’t he report the case to the police? He completed his five-year term but didn’t raise those issues. What we know is that there is no missing money. The only assets we know that are missing are vehicles that were auctioned by Mwonzora. We also know that the last vehicles that were bought by the party were bought by vice president Tendai Biti when he was the secretary general. Those cars we have them and we cannot give them because they belong to the party,” said Mr Hwende.