The developments followed the death of the suspected
Chinese cartel member Zhaoxi Wu who was
using forged identity documents while living in Zimbabwe.
His wife Yan Yu was now allegedly seeking to fraudulently
register the estate of a living person whom her husband had been impersonating.
The late Zhaoxi arrived in Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and
fraudulently obtained identity and travel documents in the name of Zhaosheng Wu
who happens to be his brother and with whom he was involved in reportedly shady
business deals.
The identity scam, according to victims of their alleged
con-artistry, was designed to facilitate and conceal their crimes.
The brothers are said to be on the wanted list of many
countries around the globe.
Most of the cartel’s assets including mines, swathes of
prime land in Harare and elsewhere across the country, huge interests in
tourism and hospitality, among other properties are registered in Zhaosheng’s
name.
This is the estate that Yan is seeking to register as her
late husband’s estate.
The protracted legal battle pitting Yan and a group of
Zimbabwean businessmen led by Washington Frera and Vincent Tom Baris, who claim
to be victims of the Chinese cartel and which battle has become a common
feature at the courts, has opened a can of worms.
Information that has been presented to the courts in this
battle exposed the many fraudulent activities, dirty schemes and involvement of
government officials which, among other shocking criminal acts, led to the
secretive burial of the late Zhaoxi at some farm in Chegutu where the grave has
been marked under a different name.
It took the involvement of the President’s Office to locate
the grave and there are reportedly ongoing efforts to have the body in that
grave exhumed for further identity verification.
Latest in the legal battle is a June 22, 2022 Supreme Court
application for leave to appeal against a High Court judgment that was passed
on June 6 2022, which overturned an earlier magistrates court ruling acquitting
the Zimbabwean businessmen of fraud and forgery charges pressed against them by
Yan.
Yan is the appellant in the High Court case, which has
found the Zimbabwean businessmen guilty of fraud and forging signatures to
documents that seek to change ownership of some prime land in Waterfalls,
Harare from Yan through inheritance of her husband Zhaosheng’s estate.
The basis of the businessmen’s appeal to the Supreme Court,
however, is Yan’s alleged fraudulent claim to the estate.
While she claims in various court hearings and through
sworn affidavits that she is Zhaosheng’s wife and that her husband is dead, it
has been proven that in fact Yan’s husband is actually Zhaoxi.
The Chinese embassy and Zimbabwean authorities have
confirmed that Yan’s claims are false and that in fact, Zhaosheng is alive in
China and that Yan’s husband, Zhaoxi is
the one who died in Zimbabwe in 2017.
Details of the various court proceedings in which Yan
purports to be the wife of Zhaosheng whom she also claims is dead is a story
for another day.
Several months investigations by The Standard revealed how
the RG’s office was duped into issuing a passport and national identity document
to Zhaoxi in the name of Zhaosheng and also how, after his death, Zhaoxi’s wife
Yan managed to fraudulently obtain a death certificate and burial order for her
husband Zhaoxi in the name of Zhaosheng,
who is alive.
The mystery deepened as our investigations took us to a
lone grave in the middle of a remote farm in Chegutu where Zhaoxi aka Zhaosheng
W was buried under another different name.
According to documents in our possession, a communication
between the RG’s Office and the President’s Office dated January 18 2022, the
Foreign Affairs ministry and the Chinese embassy were involved in the issuance
of the burial order for Zhaoxi’s body under the false identity Zhaosheng.
Upon unearthing the identity scam when issues of the
deceased’s estate arose with Yan claiming that she was “the late Zhaosheng’s
widow” the President’s Office immediately wrote to the RG’s requesting the
cancellation of the burial order and identity documents for Zhaosheng as they
were products of fraud.
Part of the response by the RG to this request reads: “He
(Zhaoxi Wu) used this identity document and name Zhaosheng Wu until his death
on 04 June 2017.
“On 07 July 2017 the permanent secretary of Foreign Affairs
wrote to the chief director of Immigration on behalf of the Chinese embassy
requesting for the burial order for Zhaosheng Wu.
“However, the identity of the deceased was queried and on
June 8 2017, the secretary for Foreign Affairs again wrote to the chief
director of Immigration requesting for assistance to have DNA samples extracted
from the deceased for identity verification and assistance with the burial
order or repatriation, depending on the outcome of the identity verification.
“Meanwhile, correspondence from the Chinese embassy and the
chief director of Immigration both requested the issuance of the burial order
under the identities previously given, ie Zhaosheng Wu.
“This paved way for the issuance of the burial order by the
Registrar General on 08 August 2017.
“The burial order was issued at Parirenyatwa Hospital
Sub-Office.”
As a result Zhaoxi Wu was buried as Zhaosheng Wu at
Tiverton Farm in Chegutu which is registered under the later’s name.
The registrar general further wrote: “On 31 January 2018
the Chinese embassy wrote to Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirming that the
so-called Zhaosheng Wu who had died in Harare was actually Zhaoxi Wu and the
two were “actually brothers”.
“Zhaosheng Wu was in China at the time of his brother’s
death.
“The Chinese embassy further requested through the Minsitry
of Foreign Affairs that the death certificate of the deceased be produced in
the name of Zhaoxi Wu….
“This explains why the burial order bears the name
Zhaosheng and the death certificate is in the name Zhaoxi.
“The burial order however should have been returned to the
issuing office soon after burial. This was not done.
At the time of his death Zhaoxi was married to Yan and she was the one who
was issued with the burial order as the closest relative to the deceased.
In an interview recently, one of the Zimbabwean businessmen
Tom-Baris told The Standard that they believed there was deliberate and
criminal intent by Yan to misrepresent her dead husband as Zhaosheng.
The plan, he said, was to fraudulently claim the many
assets owned by Zhaosheng whom she falsely claimed was her deceased husband.
The Waterfalls property in Harare which is at the centre of
the court battle is one of the target assets which Tom-Baris and his partners
say was bought by their company in a transaction involving a gold mine in
Bindura.
Tom-Baris cited the false claims by Yan that her husband
was Zhaosheng and her “fraudulent attempts” to register Zhaosheng’s
estate as the bona fide widow, as evidence of her “deceptive and
unreliable character”.
“Instead of dragging us to the courts, Yan should be
arrested on sight for the many criminal actions that she stands guilty of,” he
said.
“On her apparent admission, she connived with her late
husband to obtain false identity documents for him, then she proceeded to apply
for a burial order for her husband Zhaoxi Wu under a false identity,before
illegally keeping the burial order and using it to dupe the Master of the High
Court into registering Zhaosheng’s estate and making her the executor.
“That alone warrants her immediate arrest and deportation,”
Tom-Baris fumed.
“She even registered her own two children with Zhaoxi Wu as
Zhaosheng Wu’s children as a way to fraudulently make them heirs to the estate
of a person who is still alive,” said Tom-Baris adding that the courts would
eventually vindicate him.
Contacted for comment last week, Yan dismissed claims by
Tom-Baris and his colleagues saying she was being victimised because she was a
vulnerable widow who did not have protection.
She insisted she was innocent and that the June 4 High
Court order overturning the lower court ruling vindicated her.
She refused to respond to allegations of her colluding in
the fraudulent registration of a Zimbabwean identity document by her husband as
Zhaosheng and her providing this false information in the death notice
following the demise of her husband Zhaoxi.
“If you perused the court records then it means you already
know my side of the story,” Yan said.
“You have the full story already. I have nothing to add or
subtract from what is already on record.
“If you are a professional reporter who is there to report
facts as they are you already know and you need not ask for my side of the
story.”
Evidence at hand, however, further confirms that Yan
registered Zhaosheng’s estate under DR 1561/17 proclaiming herself as the widow
of the deceased and thereby fraudulently obtaining letters of administration of
the ‘deceased’ person under her name when in fact Zhaosheng is alive.
She also registered her own two children with her husband
Zhaoxi as heirs to Zhaosheng’s estate.
The master of the High Court has, however, since cancelled
the estate after realising the fraudulent nature of documents deposited with
them.
The deputy master of the High Court, K.F Chigomararwa wrote
to Tom-Baris confirming they had since received confirmation from the RG’s
office indicating that the death certificate and other documents issued in
respect of Zhaosheng had been cancelled on August 3 2018 “after it was
discovered that the so-called Zhaosheng was an imposter and the Zimbabwean
identity documents had been fraudulently acquired”.
“Accordingly, it follows that all proceedings to do with
the administration of the estate have been set aside and letters of appointment
issued in favour of Yan Yu as the executrix dative have been revoked.
“The whole process has been rendered invalid and the record
is recorded as closed.” Standard
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