The ManicaPost
Post Correspondent
A DIRECTOR with a Harare-based company risks going to prison for three months if he fails to pay the $700 fine that he was ordered by the court to fork out following a fraud conviction.
Ishmael Murota (49) a director of Afrox Company Registration Services was convicted on his own guilty plea.
Murota was charged for contravening Section 136 of the Criminal law (Codification and Reform) Act, Chapter 9:23 when he, together with two other accomplices who are on the run, defrauded a co-director. Mutare magistrate, Mr Tendai Mahwe presided over the matter. Mr Cuthbert Bhosha represented the State. “In 2004 the complainant, Francessca Nyamhete, entered into an agreement with Denford Chabayiwa who is now deceased to form a company. They both successfully formed the company Summit Searching Bureau Private Limited. They were the only directors of the company.
“The company which was into mining bought five mining blocks which are Grand Manica 3, Grand Manica 13, Grand Manica 14, Grand Manica 15 and Grand Manica 16. In 2007, Chabayiwa passed on but no changes were made to the company in accordance with the Company’s Act by the remaining shareholder,” said Mr Bhosha.
In August 2014, Chabayiwa’s widow and daughter allegedly approached Murota who owns a company that deals with company registrations and hatched a plan to defraud Summit Searching Bureau of its mining blocks. Murota then removed the late Chibayiwa from being one of the directors and replaced him with Sandra Sithole. He then signed on the annual returns of the company in question knowing clearly well that the deceased was dead and was a co-director and secretary of the company.
He went on to forge the deceased’s signature on the annual returns. Murota defrauded the complainant by misrepresenting to the Registrar of Companies in Harare by submitting forms of annual return of a company for certain years bearing a purported signature of the late Denford Chibayiwa.
