TWO Harare businessmen who were facing allegations of fraud in the Brian James Rhodes Estate dispute have been acquitted.
A Harare woman, Elizabeth Parirenyatwa, who claimed to be the executor of the estate of the late Brian James Rhodes who died in 2006, has been in a legal battle with Brian Murphy and Adam Wood for years.
In 2022, Parirenyatwa was evicted from a property along Mutare Road belonging to Karoi Properties (Pvt) Ltd before she pressed a charge of fraud against the two businessmen.
She claimed that Murphy and Wood falsified a CR14 form that lists company directors and changed Rhodes’ date of death from 2006 to 2012 to mislead officials in the Companies Registry.
The first to be acquitted was Wood after he was discharged at the close of the State case.
In acquitting Wood, magistrate Lisa Mutendereki said there was nothing linking him to the charges levelled against him.
However, the magistrate put Murphy to his defence to explain who supplied information to the Registrar of Companies office.
After the trial, which took six weeks, the magistrate acquitted Murphy after closure of the defence case.
- Businessmen acquitted in Rhodes estate dispute
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Mutendereki ruled that there was no evidence that Murphy was responsible for filing of the CR14.
She said the State failed to prove the essential elements of fraud in the case.
“The CR14 was not filed by the accused person and the State conducted a rushed investigation,” the magistrate ruled.
She further stated that it was also not fully established how Murphy was linked to the CR14.
During trial, the pair’s lawyers Kudzayi Kadzere of Kadzere, Hungwe & Mandevere and Marlvin Mapako of Rubaya & Chatambudza accused Parirenyatwa of being a fraudster.
Kadzere said Parirenyatwa forged a power of attorney and failed to bring it as evidence to conceal her deeds.
The court heard that none of the late Rhodes’ children were at the edict meeting, where Parirenyatwa was allegedly appointed executor dative.
Parirenyatwa admitted that she was not in Harare when the CR14 was filed with the Registrar of Companies.
Kadzere put it to Parirenyatwa that she had no evidence to prove that the accused persons misrepresented to the Registrar of Companies.
He produced an inventory prepared by Elizabeth Rhodes, the widow, which shows that she did not list Karoi Properties as her late husband’s property.
Investigations established that all the beneficiaries had been paid and Parirenyatwa had refused to take note of all previous High Court judgments in favour of Phoenix Trust the owner of the shares and that the estate owned nothing.
