Facing charges of fraud of US$500 000, Moses Ruwona, who was eyeing the Makoni West constituency National Assembly seat, and his accomplice, Macmillan Chiweshe, were yesterday granted bail of $300 000 each by Harare regional magistrate Mr Stanford Mambanje.
Mr Mambanje ordered the two to pay $300 000 each, to surrender their passports at the clerk of court, and to report once every Friday at their nearest police stations. The two are facing two counts of fraud and one count of money laundering.
It is alleged that the pair issued fake receipts of payments for the import of WiFi routers and a financial services company that was organising the payment for imports of fabric by a client.
Waltrop (Pvt) Ltd, specialising in commodity broking and represented by director Mr Farai Chikuwa (43), was the first target of the alleged frauds.
Prosecuting, Mr Pardon Dziva said in December last year, Waltrop was awarded a contract by Liquid Telecommunications Holdings of Zimbabwe to supply outdoor wi-fi routers, importing these from Liquid Telecommunication Holdings of Mauritius.
On December 8 last year, Waltrop wanted to pay Liquid of Mauritius for the outdoor WiFi routers.
Ms Chikuwa did so through her brother, Aubrey Chademana who engaged Chiweshe, who undertook to settle the Mauritius payment using his offshore foreign currency account. This was legal.
On the same day, Chiweshe received US$630 400 from Mr Chademana and forwarded it to Ruwona to settle the bill.
Ruwona reportedly provided a fake proof of payment claiming to have transferred the money from his account in Zambia to the Standard Bank account of Liquid of Mauritius. On January 20 and February 3 this year Ruwona and Chiweshe again sent Ms Chikuwa further fake proofs of payment.
On February 15, they sent a proof of payment of US$426 420 and on February 17, they sent a proof of payment of US$203 910.
On March 7, they transferred US$280 332 and US$132 151.24 to Liquid of Mauritius, but failed to account for the remaining US$218 249.
Using the same method, they allegedly defrauded Access Finance of US$256 000 in a deal to import fabric material.
The two companies reported the matter to the police leading to the arrest of Ruwona and Macmillan two weeks ago.
While Ruwona’s defence team led by Mr Oliver Marwa had sought to characterise the “free funds” arrangement between the complainants and his Tambwari Holdings as money laundering, such transactions are allowed under Statutory Instruments 85 of 2020, and 109 of 1996 which permit individuals and companies to settle obligations using free funds.
In this case, Ruwona was entrusted by Liquid of Zimbabwe and others on the basis of his purported access to such cash earned from his tourism management operations in Victoria Falls and Livingstone, Zambia.
According to the statutory Instruments, the fundamental features of “free funds” include the fact that they are lawfully held by a Zimbabwean, earned in foreign currency, and are not subject to limits and authorisation by exchange control authorities.-state media