By A Correspondent| In yet another development, a recent report has revealed that Augur Investments owned by Kenneth Raydone Sharpe clinched the Harare Airport road project deal with City of Harare before it was even registered as a company.

A fatal report done recently on Augur Investments dealings in the country gives away how Sharpe, with the blessings of former minister of Local Government and Public Works, Ignatius Chombo entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with City of Harare in June 2007 before proceeding to register the company in September 2007.

It further boggles the mind to note that a signatory to these shady deals, Oleksandr Sheremet in 2007 only became Augur Investments’ board member a year later, on the 18th of September in 2008.

This goes without saying that Augur Investments couldn’t have managed to furnish City of Harare with documents of their previous projects because there were none which explains why their tender was later on canceled due to lack of technical expertise and incapacitation on their part.

This is even validated by the fact that soon after winning the tender, they immediately sub-contracted the whole Airport Road project to a company called Power roads Zimbabwe (Pvt) Ltd, a company which was only incorporated in 2009, a year after signing of the MoU.

However, Augur Investments cited another South African based partner in the joint venture company called Power Construction to do the construction on the Airport Road project. By so doing, it was merely hiring Power Construction South Africa to build the Airport Road under the guise of a joint venture company.

Equally astounding is the fact that most companies the world over are riding high through digitalisation and technological advancement, yet Augur Investments, through its vehicle Sunshine Development projects which siphoned over 93 hectares (the size of 93 football pitches) for doing nothing, doesn’t even have a website or evidence in the public domain about their exploits elsewhere.

Latest revelations reawaken the Draxgate scandal when Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr Obadiah Moyo awarded a US$60 million Covid-19 supply contract to a shelf company called Drax without going to public tender.

To demonstrate the level of Ken Sharpe’s impunity, President Emmerson Mnangagwa fired Dr Moyo and he was arraigned before the courts on corruption charges yet land baron Sharpe and his vehicle, Augur Investments have escaped unscathed with vast tracts of land worth billions of dollars, an amount that would make the Draxgate scandal a non-event in comparison.

In actual fact, Draxgate is just but a drop in the ocean as compared to what Sharpe has stolen from Zimbabwe.