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Yeukai Karengezeka Court Correspondent
The bail hearing application for the aspiring member of Parliament for Makoni West Moses Ruwona and his accomplice Macmillan Chiweshe, who are allegedly involved in a US$500 000 fraud case, was yesterday postponed to today.
The pair allegedly issued a fake receipts of payments to a local telecommunications firm and a financial services company.
The State led by Mr Pardon Dziva asked for postponement to allow the investigation officer to testify.
Ruwona appeared before Harare magistrate Mr Stanford Mambanje charged with fraud.
Prosecuting, Mr Pardon Dziva alleged that sometime in December last year, the complainant Aubrey Chademana was awarded a contract by Liquid Telecommunications Holdings (Pvt) Limited in Zimbabwe to supply outdoor WiFi routers.
Chademana was supposed to import WiFi routers from Liquid Telecommunication Holdings in Mauritius.
Mr Dziva further alleged that on December 8, Chademana engaged Ruwona who undertook to settle the payment using his offshore foreign currency account.
On the same day, Chiweshe received US$630 400 from the Chademana and forwarded it to Ruwona to settle the bill.
Ruwona reportedly provided a fake proof of payment document claiming to have transferred the money from his account in Zambia to Liquid Telecommunications Mauritius’ Standard Bank.
On January 20, 2023, Ruwona and Chiweshe again sent the complainant another fake proof of payment.
They did the same on February 3.
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 successfully transferred US$280 332 and US$132 151.24 to Liquid Telecommunications Mauritius, but failed to account for the remaining US$218 249.
Using the same modus operandi, they allegedly defrauded Assess Finance of US$256 000 in a deal to import some fabric material.
The complainant reported the matter to the police leading to the arrest of the two accused persons.
While Mr Ruwona’s defence team has sought to characterise the ‘free fund’ arrangement between the complainants and his Tambwari Holdings outfits as money laundering, these transactions are allowed under statutory instruments (SIs) 85 of 2020 and 109/96 – and whereby individuals, and companies are permitted to settle obligations using such monies.
In this case, the accused was entrusted by Liquid Telecom and other parties on the basis of his purported access to such cash and earned from his tourism management operations between Victoria Falls, and Livingstone in Zambia.
According to the SIs and the law, the fundamental features of ‘free funds’ include the fact that they are lawfully held by a Zimbabwean, earned in foreign currency, not subject to limits and authorisation by exchange control authorities.
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