Bulawayo lawyer faces $46 500 lawsuit

By Mashudu Netsianda

BULAWAYO – A senior partner at leading Bulawayo law firm, Cheda and Partners, Mlamuli Ncube, is being sued for $46,500 by a city businessman after he was allegedly implicated in a bungled sale of a house.

The deal also involved a bogus estate agent, Charles Mawire, 34, who sold the property for $60,000 and allegedly issued fake title deeds to the businessman.

According to the summons issued at the Bulawayo High Court on February 2, Ncube was cited as the first defendant while Cheda and Partners is the second defendant. The businessman, Bernard Muntanga, is the plaintiff.

“Wherefore plaintiff claim payment of $46,500 jointly and severally with one paying the other to be absolved, being money due and payable to the plaintiff, the sum being owed by the first defendant who was acting within the course and scope of employment under the employ of second defendant in the abortive sale of House Number 8 Glenwood Road, Woodlands in Bulawayo,” said Muntanga through his lawyer, David Mhiribidi of Mutuso, Taruvinga and Mhiribidi Attorneys.

In the court papers, Muntanga is accusing Ncube and Cheda and Partners of failing to honour their agreement to settle the debt whose deadline was January 31, 2015.

“First defendant duly admitted liability of this sum in an acknowledgement of debt signed on December 10, 2014 wherein he had undertaken to pay the said sum on or before January 31, 2015, but failed and/or neglected to do so,” he said.

Muntanga is also claiming a collection commission fee in terms of the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) by-laws, an interest thereon at prescribed rate per annum and the cost of suit.

Ncube has up to Thursday to enter an appearance to defend at the office of the Registrar of High Court.

Mawire of Mpopoma Flats has since appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Sibongile Msipa-Marondedze facing a fraud charge and operating as an illegal practitioner.

Cheda and Partners has since been placed under voluntary curatorship by order of the Bulawayo High Court.

Ncube and his partner, Sindiso Shepherd Mazibisa have since voluntarily agreed to surrender their practising certificates to the LSZ pending forensic audit of the law firm’s trust account.

LSZ has appointed Advocate Perpetua Dube as the curator of the law firm until March 31 when the curatorship expires.

The latest development comes at a time when a third of the lawyers practising in Zimbabwe are being investigated by LSZ for various cases of fraud and corruption which they committed throughout the course of last year.

There were 1,240 registered lawyers in 2014, but almost 400 of them are under investigation, putting a dent on the profession for which honesty is a cardinal rule.

Source: The Chronicle