Mutodi files fresh bail application
HARARE businessman-cum-musician Energy Mutodi, who is in a Mutare remand prison has filed a fresh bail application after his matter was struck off the High Court roll last week.
Mutodi is accused of defrauding desperate home seekers in Mutare of close to US$2 million in a housing scandal. His lawyer Mr Farai Nyamayaro confirmed that he had filed an application at the High Court on behalf of Mutodi.
“We have filed another bail application at the High Court and the matter has been set for today,” he said.
He said Mutodi still argues that the Mutare magistrate made an assumption when he said he was a flight risk as there was no evidence to prove the claim as he never attempted to flee or behave in a manner that would have made police to assume that.
Mr Nyamayaro argued that his client was of fixed abode and he did not have any travel documents as they were part of the bail conditions in a similar matter he was arrested for in Harare.
Allegations against Mutodi, who is facing similar charges in Harare involving more than US$6 million, are that he hatched a plan to defraud unsuspecting civil servants and formed NHDT situated at the Zimpost building in Mutare.
He allegedly lured civil servants into paying NHDT monthly payments to buy land in Mutare’s Gimboki South housing project to peg and service it. He allegedly promised to allocate residential stands to each of them.
A total of 1 562 home seekers joined Mutodi’s NHDT and he started receiving varying amounts of cash deducted from the complainants’ salaries through a Salary Service Bureau stop order facility and converted the money to his own personal use.
The State says Mutodi was the owner of NHDT and some payslips of the complainants with deductions of cash towards NHDT would be produced in court as evidence.
The businessman-cum-musician is a signatory to funds of the NHDT and is the one who personally benefited from the cash that the complainants lost through SSB deductions, it is alleged.
The civil servants’ contributions amounted to US$1 699 620. Mutodi is facing another fraud charge of allegedly selling a residential stand to two people.
