New twist to the $34 million fraud case

Yeukai Karengezeka Court Correspondent

The State has corrected the names of the two men charged for defrauding Gains Cash and Carry $34 million by forging signatures to process the bank transfer, and has made it clear that lawyer Mr Neville Farai Kambarami was incorrectly cited as the co-accused of Tinotenda Ngoshi in the first charge of fraud of which Ngoshi is alone on that case.

The charge has since been amended.

Ngoshi’s co-accused on the second charge of money laundering is Fungai Kanyandura.

Mr Kambarami was the lawyer engaged by Ngoshi to settle his court case which is the basis of the fraud case that is before the court and was never a co-accused.

According to the court papers, Gain Cash and Carry has a ZB account whose official signatories are Johnson Gapu, Tatenda Bonyogwa, Prudence Majoni, and Liberty Murimwa.

Any of the four signatories could authorise a transaction for the account given at any time.

On Monday, the State led as witnesses Mr Gapu, the procurement director, Mr Bonyongwa the chief finance officer, and Mr Tinashe Takavadii, the loss control manager. The two accused were remanded to July 20 for trial continuation.

Prosecuting, Mr Loveti Muringwa alleged that on the first count on June 28, last year Ngoshi went to ZB Bank Avondale and presented a forged manual application for the electronic transfer of funds pretending to be Mr Gapu.

The application form had been signed by two signatories directing the bank to effect a transfer of $34 700 000 from the company account into the account of Zilbex Investment.

On the second count, Mr Muringwa alleged that Ngoshi after transferring the money fraudulently, Gain Cash and Carry finance department quickly discovered that they had been fraudulently debited and alerted the bank.

Then on July 7, 2022 in company of Mr Kambarami, Ngoshi and Kanyandura went to CBZ and served it with an urgent chamber application pressing them to release the money to Ngoshi.

They further served the bank with an invoice purported to be goods supplied to Gain Cash and Carry by their Zilbex company, which was false.

This led to the arrest of Ngoshi while his accomplice escaped from the scene and was later arrested.

However, in their defense outline the two are denying the charges arguing that they are victims of fraud themselves.

The State says Ngoshi supplied solar hardware to someone called Dickson whose further particulars are not known.

The said Dickson advised him that he was procuring the solar hardware for his client known as Gain Cash and Carry. In terms of the supply contract, Ngoshi released the goods once the purchase price was reflected in his CBZ Bank account.

However, he was dismayed to discover that a few days after the money was reflected in his account, the account was frozen by CBZ bank.

Ngoshi then sought help from Mr Kambarami who is an experienced lawyer and had once worked for CBZ Bank himself.

In the second count, Ngoshi and Kanyandura deny ever transferring the alleged amount from Grain Cash and Carry ZB account and had no knowledge that the transfer of the money was meant to mask or disguise the illicit origin of the money.

They believe that they are victims of an elaborate scam of Dickson, the ZB Avondale Branch authorities as well as the Gain Cash and Carry employees meant to fleece Ngoshi of his money.