Former Harare town clerk Tendai Mahachi (61), who is accused of influencing the City of Harare to part with $800 000 to a bogus parking equipment manufacturer, was yesterday brought to court on fraud allegations.
BY DESMOND CHINGARANDE
Mahachi was granted $200 bail by Harare magistrate Josephine Sande, who remanded him to May 31.
As part of his bail conditions, Mahachi was ordered to report once every Friday at CID Serious Fraud, to surrender his passport with the clerk of court, not to interfere with State witnesses and to reside at his given address.
Mahachi was an ex-officio director of City Parking (Pvt) Limited, a subsidiary company of City of Harare. He is being represented by Tapson Dzvetero, who put the State on notice to apply for exception of charges on the next remand date.
It is the State’s case that sometime in January 2014, Mahachi, using his influence as town clerk, misrepresented to council that Shelstein Enterprises (Pvt) Ltd was in the business of parking management.
The State alleges on January 30 of that same year, Shelstein was invited by the City of Harare business committee to make a presentation of their services, where it misrepresented that it was the Southern African region sole franchise holder for Parx Global International, a company based in Israel which is into manufacturing and supplying of parking management equipment and software.
It is alleged they further misrepresented that they were able to provide state-of-the-art parking management systems from Parx Global International at no cost to City Parking.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
As a result on March 7, 2014, Mahachi allegedly caused a memorandum of understanding to be signed between City of Harare, represented by him, and Shelstein Enterprises, represented by Withus Masunda. On May 20 that same year, seven councillors and Shelstein, represented by Tendai Matimba and Masunda, went to Israel for due diligence on Parx Global International.
While in Israel, Matimba, through his company Cashless Payment Technologies, entered into a memorandum of agreement of franchise as the sole distributor in Southern Africa for Parx Global Parking Management Systems.
It is alleged on June 20, Mahachi, using his influence, recommended City Parking to enter into a joint venture partnership with Shelstein, knowing that the company was not in the said business and that each partner should contribute $800 000.
On October 29, City Parking allegedly transferred $800 000 into Shelstein Enterprises’ ZB Bank Bindura branch account, which money was withdrawn and converted to own use.
Sebastian Mutizirwa appeared for the State.
