A 36-year-old employee with GetBucks has appeared in court on allegations of defrauding Adlecraft Investment Private Limited of US$1 300 000.
Belinda Shumirai Mutengwa was facing fraud charges when she appeared before Harare magistrate Mr Dennis Mangosi.
She was remanded out of custody on free bail.
Allegations are that Mutengwa and her accomplices Gilad Shabtai (still at large) and Munyaradzi Gonyora who is already on remand for the same offence mooted a plan to steal money from Adlecraft Investment and in pursuant to their plan, without a resolution from the board of directors, decided to open a conduit account with Getbucks.
The court heard that on April 20, Mutengwa whose duties were to check and verify account opening forms processed the form which was presented on behalf of Aldercraft Investment.
She allegedly authorised the system and opened a Foreign Currency Account (FCA) without following all the requirements for opening a corporate account. The account was fraudulently opened without the knowledge of the director Ofer Sivan.
The court heard that on March 18, without the authority of either the board or shareholder, Gilad Shabtai wrote a letter to the chief executive of Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamonds Company (ZCDC), a company which owed the complainant, requesting that the money owed be deposited into the fraudulently opened GetBucks account which was to be used as a conduit account.
It is alleged that Shabtai and Gonyora transferred the money from the GetBucks account into a South African registered account with Investec bank belonging to Shabtai’s company purporting to be paying for mining equipment that had already been paid for.
As a result of the accused’s actions, the complainant suffered prejudice of US$1 300 000. – Herald
