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Tendai Rupapa Senior Court Reporter
three Navistar Insurance Brokers Limited directors who were implicated in the Air Zimbabwe (Private) Limited scandal for allegedly defrauding the national airline of more than five million euro and US$2 million yesterday spent another night in custody after their matter was rolled over to today for bail ruling.
Managing directors Givemore Nderere (45) and Vukile Hlupo (45) and finance director Orten Mawire (60) yesterday appeared before Harare magistrate Mr Tendai Mahwe for their bail application.
They are facing four counts of fraud and one of theft.
Mr Mahwe rolled over the matter to today for bail ruling after hearing submissions from both parties.
In his bail application, the trio’s lawyer, Mr George Mhlanga, said his clients were going to challenge the findings of the audit report which they claimed was authored by an interested party.
“The accused persons will be able to discredit the findings and conclusions that came out of the audit report because this was an exercise authored by an interested party who had a motive to justify taking away the insurance portfolio from Navistar to a company in which he is a managing director.
“This court will be interested to know that the chairperson of the finance and audit committee of Air Zimbabwe is the managing director of Champions Company which is the very company which took over business from Navistar.
“It is, therefore, submitted that the findings have a lot of misrepresentation of facts which the accused can be able to demonstrate during their trial,” he said.
Mr Mhlanga argued that his clients were proper candidates for bail considering that they never tried to run away when they were being investigated.
“Your Worship, we do not believe that there are compelling reasons put forward by the State which would justify the continued incarceration of the accused persons pending trial,” he said.
Mr Mhlanga said the State’s claims in opposing bail that the trio was likely to abscond, were unfounded.
“All the three have never shown any intentions to abscond and would therefore never abscond if granted bail. They became aware of the fact that investigations were being conducted way back in 2013 and newspaper publications came out as far back as August 2013 but that did not deduce the accused persons to run away,” he said.
He added that the State should not bank on the submission that investigations were still underway arguing that people are not arrested to be investigated but investigated to be arrested.
He also said that his clients were not going to interfere with witnesses since they did not know who the witnesses are.
Opposing bail, Mr Michael Reza said the trio would disappear if freed on bail.
Mr Reza said the only way to secure the accused person’s attendance in court for trial is to remand them in custody.
“Your Worship, simple arithmetic will show that we are dealing with millionaires because of the US$8,7 million, nothing was recovered.
The accused shared this money among themselves, so if granted bail they are likely to leave the country as they have means of survival even abroad.
“They have submitted that they can be made to surrender their passports, but Your Worship what will stop them from swimming across the Limpopo like what other border jumpers are doing because they will say it is better than life in prison,” he said.
Mr Reza added that if granted bail, the accused persons, who hold senior positions in their company, would intimidate their subordinates and destroy or conceal evidence.
He also said that police needed more time to complete investigations adding that all indications so far pointed to the trio and their accomplices.
He said granting them bail would be like “tying a dog to a tree using meat as the rope”.
Mr Mahwe is expected to pass his ruling today.
Online Reporter