CHINHOYI — Jailed former Chinhoyi acting mayor Busani Dube-Marumahoko has been freed after he successfully launched an appeal against both conviction and his 18-month jail term.
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The ex-mayor was jailed a month ago for swindling a Chinhoyi home-seeker of $2 000 after selling him a non-existent residential stand.
Dube-Marumahoko left Chinhoyi Prison on Thursday after his lawyer Marshal Chinzanga of Mangwana and Partners law firm filed an appeal at the High Court.
“I have appealed at the High Court against both sentence and judgment by the local courts. I am happy to be a free man again. Prison life is not good, there is hunger and squalour. I could tell you gory stories which you can write for a whole year about prison life,” Dube-Marumahoko told NewsDay yesterday.
The State’s case was that sometime in August last year, Dube-Marumahoko (33) and Desmond Marufu (30), a housing clerk in the Ministry of National Housing and Social Amenities, connived to swindle Herbert Mutombwa by selling him a non-existent stand.
Mutombwa approached Dube-Marumahoko looking for a stand to buy and the latter offered his residential stand for $2 500 and they agreed terms. The acting mayor then went to Marufu and they fraudulently processed the papers for the stand in Rujeko suburb.
The buyer paid $2 000 for the stand promising to pay the balance later. They showed him the stand and he went to check with council the status of the stand.
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He was told that it was not for sale but instead had been reserved for the less privileged. Mutombwa also discovered that the stand shown to him bore a different number from the one on the housing forms.
He was advised by another councillor that the housing forms he was given were fake. Complainant then confronted the ex-mayor who allegedly confessed to swindling the prospective homeseeker and offered to pay reimbursement.
They went to a lawyer where he made an undertaking to repay the money by October 5. Mutombwa later made a police report, leading to the pair’s arrest.
Dube-Marumahoko was consequently suspended by Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo in February this year after the alleged scam was exposed.
