HARARE – Jailed business partners Moses Mpofu and Mike Chimombe risk being a substantive jail term of 20 years if they get convicted of defrauding the state of US$7 million, according to High court judge Pisirayi Kwenda.

The judge said this while turning down the application for bail by the two who have been languishing in jail since their arrest in June last year.

Mpofu and Chimombe face allegations of corruption over the Presidential Goat Scheme in which it is alleged that they defrauded the ministry of Lands of US$7 million after applying and securing a tender using a non-existent firm.

Kwenda said because of the severity of the sentence the two are facing, they were likely to abscond.

“Regarding the seriousness of the offence, I have looked at the penalty and the presumptive penalty for fraud is 20 years,” the judge said.

“If a fraud involves public funds and involves a huge prejudice, the sentence will be severe.

“I’m persuaded that the presumptive sentence knowledge of the penalty remains, and is likely to influence the applicants to flee.”

The judge further said the court should be guided by the presumptive sentence of an offence when dealing with a bail application.

“It must consider that sentence first, it can go down, it can go up, it can go down.

“These sentencing guidelines have to be followed.

“Where the item, funds, or property is of high value or state funds, this will be aggravating factors.

“If the fraud is committed by an offender who is a holder of a public office, it is an aggravating factor and the court should start from there.

“If it involves public funds, it is an aggravating factor and the court should start from there,” he said before dismissing the application by the two.

In his judgement, Kwenda also criticised lawyers representing the two, for unnecessarily delaying proceedings.

Kwenda said bail applications were urgent and under normal circumstances, submissions for bail application should ordinarily not exceed 30 minutes of the court’s time.

He said judges normally deal with 20 bail applications in a day but he took two days hearing bail applications by the two friends.

“A bail application is expected to be simple and unemotional presentations of facts supporting one’s entitlement to bail,” he said.

“My analysis of facts and submissions before me are as follows; bail matters should be simple. However, as a profession, we tend to be so obsessed and end up unwittingly infringing upon the matter that will be before a court.”

“A lot of time was lost while parties tussled over what type of an application was before me.”

“I’m just saying this to show that we delayed this case for no reason,” he said.

Professor Lovemore Madhuku, representing Chimombe, said they are not happy with the ruling and will be filing an appeal at the Supreme Court once they receive a full judgement.