No joy for Energy Mutodi
By Innocent Ruwende
Businessman-cum-musician Energy Mutodi remained in custody yesterday after his bail hearing on charges of swindling desperate homeseekers in Mutare of close to US$2 million in a housing scandal was deferred to today.
The flamboyant singer is in a Mutare remand prison awaiting trial. On Wednesday Mutodi filed a fresh bail application after his matter was struck off the High Court roll last week.
He is facing fraud charges involving US$2 million. His lawyer Mr Farai Nyamayaro said High Court Judge Justice Priscilla Chigumba is today expected to hear the matter which was deferred because the State did not file its submissions on time.
In his application 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. He said he has never attempted to flee or behave in a manner that would have made police assume that he was not suitable for bail.
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 involving US$6million still pending in courts in Harare.
Allegations against Mutodi in this case are that he hatched a plan to defraud unsuspecting civil servants and formed National Housing Development Trust 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.
