The courtroom drama involving business partners Moses Mpofu and Mike Chimombe took yet another intricate twist yesterday, as the defence successfully mounted an objection to the introduction of two assessors poised to preside over their trial.
Justice Pisirayi Kwenda, swayed by the arguments advanced, upheld the objection and excused the assessors, pushing the trial's resumption to Monday next week.
The defence team split into two forces. Advocate Tapson Dzvetero spearheaded proceedings in the High Court, while Professor Lovemore Madhuku simultaneously pursued a bail appeal in the Supreme Court.
The High Court session saw Adv Dzvetero object to the presence of the assessors, a challenge that Justice Kwenda upheld, dismissing the assessors from the bench.
Meanwhile, in the Supreme Court, Justice Alfas Chitakunye deferred the bail appeal hearing, in yet another delay to the protracted legal saga. Mpofu and Chimombe were formally arraigned on fraud charges in October last year. From the outset, the duo has employed a web of legal strategies aimed at thwarting the trial's progression.
Their bid to elevate the matter to the Constitutional Court, citing infringements of their fundamental rights, was decisively quashed in December, paving the way for the trial to proceed. Undeterred, the accused subsequently lodged bail applications, citing "changed circumstances," though such claims were dismissed as unsubstantiated.
Mpofu and Chimombe stand accused of orchestrating a grand scheme to defraud millions from the Presidential Goat Pass-On Scheme -- a programme meant improve rural communities. Central to the prosecution's case is the alleged forgery of compliance certificates from ZIMRA and NSSA, purportedly issued under the name of Blackdeck Private Limited.
Investigations laid bare that Blackdeck had been deregistered from the NSSA system as far back as January 2016.
The forged documents, complete with QR codes and identifiers linked to an unrelated company, were allegedly submitted in a bid to secure the lucrative Government tender to supply goats.
