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Prosper Dembedza
Herald Correspondent
The uncovering and arrest of a dishonest employee within the Council for Legal Education who was issuing fake examination certificates that allowed lawyers trained outside the country to practice has now seen a second lawyer yesterday appearing in court facing a fraud charge.
Linda Kovi (34) of Kanoti and Partners public interest lawyers appeared before Harare magistrate Mr Stanford Mambanje who granted her US$300 bail and remanded her to August 7 pending finalisation of investigations.
The complainant is the State represented by Joe Zimba who is the finance and administration manager for Council for Legal Education.
Almost all countries, including Zimbabwe, treat law graduates from domestic universities, trained within the national legal system, from foreign graduates who while they might have an excellent grounding in legal principles and terminology, need to convert to the domestic law.
This is done in Zimbabwe in a couple of ways, including full-time study, overseen by the Council for Legal Education.
Once the foreign graduate has passed the conversion course they are treated like a domestic graduate.
It is the State’s case that in 2019, Kovi graduated from the University of Africa in Lusaka, Zambia, with a Bachelor of Laws degree.
The next year she was back in Zimbabwe and enrolled with the CLE, as required, and started studying, but not that successfully.
In June 2020 she sat the exams for four modules in common law and criminal procedure and evidence. She only managed to pass Common Law two and failed the remaining three modules.
She went on to register and sit for three other modules in civil procedure, statutes and ethics and flunked the lot. She never even wrote the bookkeeping module.
Kovi then bribed an undisclosed employee of the Council for Legal Education to print a certificate saying she had passed everything when she had only passed one of the eight subjects.
That CLE employee allegedly gave the money to Huggins Hardwork Duri, who is already on remand for organising this sort of fraud, and the certificate for Kovi appeared.
That enabled her to be admitted as a legal practitioner by the High Court when she applied, since she had fulfilled the requirements, at least on paper, with the degree, the conversion and the necessary work experience under supervision.
leeroy