via Return Vingirai’s assets – Gono – DailyNews Live 19 January 2015
HARARE – In a surprise turn of events in the ZB Financial Holdings (ZBFH) and Intermarket Holdings Limited (IHL) dispute, ex-Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono had acceded that Nicholas Vingirai must be given back his assets, businessdaily has learnt.
This comes as the Transnational Holdings Limited (THL) founder and his associates have launched a fresh bid to regain their banking assets collated into the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed group, and reports that the Central Bank had also previously worked on two proposals to resolve the long-standing feud.
In an October 2012 letter to Vingirai’s attorney, Gono said the main Bank had no qualms in the former regaining his banking assets after clearing the once-exiled businessman of externalisation charges and that “he did not flee the country as was then popularly thought”.
“On scrutinizing Mr Vingirai’s activities and Intermarket transactions, the RBZ can confirm that there is no indication of deliberate externalisation or exchange control related issues against him as was initially preferred,” he said in the dispatch to Tawanda Nyambirai of Mtetwa & Nyambirai Legal Practitioners.
“To this end, we have no hesitation in requesting you as his legal counsel to do everything legal and possible to get him to recover his assets and most urgently the farm…,” Gono added.
According to the letter, Vingirai also lost his Sholliver Farm.
And as the saga continues, it has emerged that the former IHL group chief executive and his key associates, including Econet Wireless Holdings Limited (Econet), have appealed against a 2008 High Court ruling dismissing the tycoon’s earlier challenge to the forced takeover.
In the Supreme Court challenge, the parties are to argue that the lower court had erred on 14 key grounds, including that the IHL acquisition was approved without THL’s consent, key board members were party to the platform agreement, the sale violated the IHL articles of association as no pre-emptive rights were offered, key directors had voluntarily resigned from the THL subsidiary and the transactions were largely sanctioned by improperly constituted borads.
In the earlier judgment, Justice Chinembiri Bhunu had found nothing wrong with the takeover since it had been fashioned after a solvency crisis affecting many of Vingirai’s companies.
Following the 2005 bail out, the RBZ held 51 percent after an arrangement with creditors to convert their debt into equity.
After that, Gono’s central bank structured a deal with ZBFH after offloading its stake.
And in terms of the proposals earlier discussed between Nyambirai, and the RBZ, THL wanted a reversal of the purported merger between the two institutions as shareholders were to be given an equal opportunity to buy the RBZ’s stake.
Alternatively, the merged entities’ individual assets should have been independently valued, while the terms of the enforced merger should be revised to achieve parity among shareholders ahead of a possible re–engagement on whether to continue or sustain the merger or simply break–up.
COMMENTS
This further confirms what a liability Gideon Gono as governor was to Zimbabwe! The central bank is faced with a billion dollar debt which the tax payers are being asked to pay for, while the beneficiaries of the farm mechanisations and other interventions introduced by Gono are enjoying the fruits and not being made to pay towards liquidation of the debt. Now on the Intermarket saga he makes a big U turn. He probably does not realise the mess associated with this. The Intermarket empire was not small; it compromised a retail bank, a discount house, a building society, a life assurance company and an associated real estate portfolio. Was Gideon supposed to be appointed central bank governor in the first place? This is our big problem in Zimbabwe were appointments are no based on merit but on benefits that will accrue to the appointing authority.