CFI battle gets nastier

He said Stalap had requested of his removal from the board in order to get rid of him as an ‘obstruction’ to their questionable transactions.

“During my directorship of CFI, l started discovering a lot of questionable transactions mainly on the land and properties section. When I started questioning these transactions, Stalap/Zimre decided that the best way was to get rid of me,” CFI,” Chibanguza told shareholders on Wednesday at the company’s last EGM.

The burning issue relates to the sale of 834 hectares of Langford Estate to Fidelity Life Holdings in 2015, which Messina believes was sold at a large discount.

CFI sold off Langford in 2015 to Fidelity to pay off combined debts of $18 million, owed to FBC Bank, Agribank, CBZ, the Infrastructure Development Bank of Zimbabwe, NMB and Standard Chartered.

Mamvura and Chawoneka, however, joined the CFI board in May this year, nearly two years after the Langord deal was concluded.

Zimre and NSSA have a combined 55.52 percent shareholding in Fidelity, with questions raised whether due diligence was done in light of the related parties involvement.

Additionally, Chibanguza said during his suspension, Stalap tried to do another transaction involving a $5 million mortgage bond, which could potentially harm CFI.

“Recently, it has come to my attention that after my suspension Stalap/Zimre directors perpetrated another fraud by registering a $5 million mortgage bond over company property of Tefco, a company owned by one of the Stalap/Zimre directors,” Chibanguza said.

In a later email, Chibanguza said that Tefco is a finance company fronting for Simon and Hamish Rudland and that CFI was going to default, and lose some assets to Tefco.

“The interest rate at 13 percent plus 2 percent fee is too high for the amounts involved. The business can’t afford this as the rate would have gone higher on default. This would have led to the company losing very strategic assets, which is a repeat of what has been happening over the previous years.” Chibanguza said.

Chibanguza said a number of questionable land related transactions took place in the agro industrial group.

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