The development that saw controversial preacher Emmanuel Makandiwa’s choice lawyer, being exposed as a fraudster, and a de-registered lawyer, has seen 40 others joining the list of banned practitioners.

Mr Tichaona Mawere has defrauded many vulnerable customers since 2011 and he was last year further exposed when Law Society of Zimbabwe president Mr Misheck Hogwe revealed that he is illegal, following his several convictions of fraud.

Yesterday Mr Hogwe revealed that 40 more lawyers have been added to the list. He said they have barred 40 lawyers from practising for various reasons.

27 lawyers are from Harare, five from Bulawayo and the rest from different towns. Hogwe said “As the Law Society, we take stock to check which lawyers do not have PCs.

“If any of them have been practising, we charge them. So by publishing the list we want to protect the public. What we do is that at the beginning of each year, we renew Practising Certificates and before a lawyer can obtain a Practising Certificate, their law firm should have a clean audit certificate.

“Besides the audit certificate, the lawyer has to pay Practising certificate fees and subscriptions. So I would not say that a PC is not granted for one reason because they vary. For lawyers whose status reads ‘Application Denied’, they might be having pending acts of misconduct or their audit certificates are not clean.”