TWO suspected fraudsters appeared in court yesterday charged with swindling Stanbic Bank of over $550 000 in a pension fund scam.
CHARLES LAITON
The suspects — Godwin Mututa (34) and Frank Masaza (43) — were cited as directors of Infinity Asset Management, the company that administered the bank’s pension fund.
The two were not asked to plead to charges of theft of trust property when they appeared before regional magistrate Noel Mupeiwa on summons. They were remanded out of custody to May 22 for trial.
Allegations against Mututa and Masaza are that sometime in September 2008, their firm was appointed by Stanbic Bank as one of the three asset managers of the Stanbic Pension Fund.
Pursuant to the appointment, a memorandum of agreement was done between the two parties and Infinity Asset Management Limited was given an investment mandate to invest the Stanbic Pension Fund in three categories, namely equities, property and money market.
According to the court papers, since appointment, Infinity Asset Management has been receiving funds and managing the investments on behalf of Stanbic Pension Fund.
However, during the period between August 1 and 27 last year, Mututa and Masaza allegedly withdrew Stanbic’s investments cash from FBC, Ecobank and BancABC banks to the tune of $556 530 and were supposed to remit the maturity values to Stanbic Bank or roll it over as reinvestment, but they allegedly converted all the cash to their own use.
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The State alleges, in order to cover up the offence, during the first half of last year, the two produced two false investment reports which Mututa presented to Stanbic Bank and misled the financial institution into believing that its investments were safe.
However, sometime in September last year, Stanbic Bank requested Mututa to declare the money market investment that the company held for Stanbic Bank Pension Fund.
Mututa allegedly failed to account for the whole investment despite the fact that he, together with Masaza, had been supplying false information to Stanbic Bank.
An investigation was conducted to establish whether FBC, Ecobank and BancABC were holding investments from Infinity Asset Management and it was established that there were no such investments.
A report was made to police, leading to the pair’s arrest.
Tinashe Kanyemba appeared for the State, while the two were represented by Norman Mugiya.
