Harare businessman Ken Sharpe and his business associates allegedly used Harare City Council (HCC) land as collateral to secure a loan without the local authority's knowledge.
This emerged at the Harare magistrate court where property developer George Katsimberis was being cross-examined by his lawyer Tino Chinyoka for his application for referral to the Constitutional Court in a case in which he is accused of fraud by Pokugara Properties.
Pokugara is owned by Sharpe.
Katsimberis disclosed that the trio, Sharpe, Oleksandr Sheremet, and Michael van Blerk were charged with fraud under case NPA. P14065/18.
Van Blerk was arrested and stayed in remand prison for nine days while his accomplices were not arrested under unclear circumstances.
The charges against the three were controversially withdrawn by deputy prosecutor general Michael Reza, Katsimberis said.
According to Katsimberis, on June 22, 2015, City of Harare and Augur Investments entered into an agreement for the development of the Hopley Commercial area (Mbudzi Project), the development of middle-income project, construction of a hotel in Mabelreign and the upgrading of the airport road.
Sharpe, Sheremet and Van Blerk represented Augur in the joint venture agreement.
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Under the agreement, council was supposed to provide land while Augur would have provided the capital as an investor.
According to Katsimnberis, on an unknown date between February 2015, and April 2016, at NMB Bank, Van Blerk, acting in connivance with Sharpe, who was said to be at large, “unlawfully and with the intent to deceive, misrepresented that they were the sole owners of stand 33 Tariro Township, measuring about 61160 hectares, which they offered as surety against a loan of US$1.5 million.
The land was owned by Sunshine, a joint venture between the Harare City Council and Sharpe’s Augur Investments which is domiciled in Ukraine.
Augur controlled a 70% stake while the 30 remaining shares belonged to council.
The three, however, decided not to provide working capital for the joint venture agreement and borrowed money from NMB using Sunshine land as collateral without the knowledge of council.
They were allowed by NMB to acquire up to US$2.5 million as a mortgage.
Coincil reported them to the police, leading to the arrest of Van Blerk while Sharpe and Sheremet went into hiding, only to appear after the case was controversially withdrawn.
The case was prosecuted by Zivanai Machataga of the Specialist Anti-Corruption Unit before being taken over by Reza, whose immediate task was to withdraw charges against the three accused persons, according to Katsimberis.
He produced the letter by Reza that was used to withdraw the case, as well as another one from Hosea Chisango from council indicating that the municipality had entered an out-of-court settlement with Augur and was withdrawing the charges.
Leading evidence, Chinyoka exposed how the accused persons in the case turned out to be witnesses against Katsimberis, who stands accused of fraud by Pokugara for building a house in Borrowdale allegedly without an approved plan.
Chinyoka said Katsimberis has been a victim of compromised prosecution.
He said Reza caused the arrest of Roy Naybvure, a witness against Sharpe and his business aide Tatiana Aleshina and others.
He also asked why Denzel Malikwa, who works for Sharpe, was the complainant against Nyabvure on breaching council procedures when he does not work for the council.
