Mr Mambanje ordered the two to pay $300 000 each, to
surrender their passports at the clerk of court, and to report once every
Friday at their nearest police stations. The two are facing two counts of fraud
and one count of money laundering.
It is alleged that the pair issued fake receipts of
payments for the import of WiFi routers and a financial services company that
was organising the payment for imports of fabric by a client.
Waltrop (Pvt) Ltd, specialising in commodity broking and
represented by director Mr Farai Chikuwa (43), was the first target of the
alleged frauds.
Prosecuting, Mr Pardon Dziva said in December last year,
Waltrop was awarded a contract by Liquid Telecommunications Holdings of
Zimbabwe to supply outdoor wi-fi routers, importing these from Liquid
Telecommunication Holdings of Mauritius.
On December 8 last year, Waltrop wanted to pay Liquid of
Mauritius for the outdoor WiFi routers.
Ms Chikuwa did so through her brother, Aubrey Chademana who
engaged Chiweshe, who undertook to settle the Mauritius payment using his
offshore foreign currency account. This was legal.
On the same day, Chiweshe received US$630 400 from Mr
Chademana and forwarded it to Ruwona to settle the bill.
Ruwona reportedly provided a fake proof of payment claiming
to have transferred the money from his account in Zambia to the Standard Bank
account of Liquid of Mauritius. On January 20 and February 3 this year Ruwona
and Chiweshe again sent Ms Chikuwa further fake proofs of payment.
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 transferred US$280 332 and US$132 151.24
to Liquid of Mauritius, but failed to account for the remaining US$218 249.
Using the same method, they allegedly defrauded Access
Finance of US$256 000 in a deal to import fabric material.
The two companies reported the matter to the police leading
to the arrest of Ruwona and Macmillan two weeks ago.
While Ruwona’s defence team led by Mr Oliver Marwa had
sought to characterise the “free funds” arrangement between the complainants
and his Tambwari Holdings as money laundering, such transactions are allowed
under Statutory Instruments 85 of 2020, and 109 of 1996 which permit
individuals and companies to settle obligations using free funds.
In this case, Ruwona was entrusted by Liquid of Zimbabwe and
others on the basis of his purported access to such cash earned from his
tourism management operations in Victoria Falls and Livingstone, Zambia.
According to the statutory Instruments, the fundamental
features of “free funds” include the fact that they are lawfully held by a
Zimbabwean, earned in foreign currency, and are not subject to limits and
authorisation by exchange control authorities. Herald
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