High Court quashes conviction in US$2,7 million heist

Fidelis Munyoro, Chief Court Reporter

The High Court has overturned the conviction and 10-year prison sentence imposed on Tendai Zuze, who was convicted for allegedly partaking in the US$2,7 million ZB Bank highway cash heist in 2021, largely because it could not be shown that the US$35 000 found with Mr Zuze on his arrest had come from the ZB Bank cash in transit.

Justice Happias Zhou and Justice Benjamin Chikowero, sitting as judges of Appeal, declared Mr Zuze’s conviction a grave miscarriage of justice, citing insufficient evidence to link him to the crime. The heist, which involved the interception of a ZB Bank cash-in-transit van near Nyabira on the Harare-Chinhoyi highway, was at the time, the biggest-ever cash robbery.

Mr Zuze, along with Never Mwamuka and ZB Bank employee Shadreck Njowa, the alleged mastermind, was convicted in September 2022. However, Mr Zuze’s appeal exposed significant gaps in the prosecution’s case.

At the heart of the appeal was the prosecution’s failure to produce direct evidence. Although Mr Zuze was found with US$35,000 in cash at the time of his arrest, the court acknowledged that ZB Bank had not recorded the serial numbers of the stolen banknotes.

This omission rendered it impossible to conclusively identify the recovered money as part of the heist. The appeal judges ruled that the prosecution’s reliance on circumstantial evidence, such as Mr Zuze’s purchase of a Honda Fit vehicle two days after the robbery, his passage through the Nyabira tollgate, and mobile phone location data, fell far short of the legal standard required to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The trial court had accepted the prosecution’s argument that Mr Zuze’s newfound wealth was suspicious. However, Mr Zuze’s defence, that the money originated from his earnings as a small-scale miner and his wife’s Stokvel savings, was not effectively challenged.

The appeal judges noted that suspicion alone cannot substitute for evidence.

They condemned the trial court for prioritising weak circumstantial evidence over direct exculpatory testimony, which could have cleared Mr Zuze.

Concluding that the conviction was based on “colourless” inferences rather than substantiated facts, the judges quashed the conviction and set aside the sentence imposed on Mr Zuze.