Cllr Mutangi’s
co-accused, Janet Zhou, will perform 450 hours of community service at Cowdray
Park police station for the same charges.
Bulawayo
Provincial Magistrate, Richard Ramaboea, sentenced the pair to a total of 40
months in prison, and suspended two months from each count on condition that
they restitute all the victims in full by February 27. The remaining 14 months
were commuted to community service for each of them.
Mutangi and
Zhou were convicted on 13 counts of fraud last week, after they swindled local
vendors of money by falsely promising them vending bays. The pair, who had
denied the charges, was found guilty by the court.
Magistrate
Ramaboea ruled that the vendors had only handed over their money because they
were assured of legal vending bays that would allow them to trade without
running from municipal police, but Mutangi and Zhou instead defrauded them.
He said receipt
books produced in court and the constitution of their purported Bulawayo
Achievers Association were part of a ploy to evade the charges.
In mitigation,
their lawyer, Constance Mathaba of Makiye and Partners, submitted that Mutangi was a first-time
offender who had learnt from the experience and was prepared to compensate the
complainants. She said the extensive media coverage of the case had already
caused him significant embarrassment and that he would not want to repeat such
conduct.
“The accused
has never broken the law until now. He is also willing to restitute the
complainants their money. For a person of his standing, he has learnt his
lesson,” she said, adding that the public scrutiny surrounding the case had
been punitive in itself. CITE
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