Dark past haunts Carelse-Juul YOU CAN BANK ON ME . . . Trevor Carelse-Juul, who is vying for the ZIFA presidency, addresses the delegates who attended the launch of his manifesto in Harare recently
YOU CAN BANK ON ME . . . Trevor Carelse-Juul, who is vying for the ZIFA presidency, addresses the delegates who attended the launch of his manifesto in Harare recently

YOU CAN BANK ON ME . . . Trevor Carelse-Juul, who is vying for the ZIFA presidency, addresses the delegates who attended the launch of his manifesto in Harare recently

Geoffrey Nyarota Special Correspondent
THERE is little doubt in my mind that Trevor Carelse-Juul trusts in God and that the Almighty could be on his side, something he claimed this week, as he launched his manifesto in the final countdown in the race for the ZIFA presidency set for tomorrow in Harare.

Carelse-Juul will battle Philip Chiyangwa, Leslie Gwindi and James Takavada to be the leader of our football.

“I am here because I have been called to be here and I believe this is God’s plan,” he said.

My interest in Carelse-Juul is purely professional and dates back to December 2009, when the paper which I was then editor-in-chief, The Daily News, mounted a relentless investigation into allegations of corruption and fraud committed by him, acting in connivance with his accomplice, Sam Sipepa Nkomo, then chief operations officer of the wealthy Mining Industry Pension Fund.

My professional interest in the aspiring ZIFA president has been augmented over the past few weeks by what I regard as a growing tendency in our football circles to misrepresent the circumstances surrounding his departure from our national game in 1993, especially now as he seeks to become the game’s leader once again.

The controversy surrounding the Johannesburg-based businessman was generated by events far from his performance at ZIFA. For his sins in the game he was punished when he and his ZIFA leadership were forced to step down in 1993.

The controversy that cast serious aspersions on his character and forced Carelse-Juul to literally flee from Zimbabwe in December 1999, to return only now in quest of the leadership of ZIFA was created when he and his company, SBT Juul, became embroiled in serious and well-documented allegations of corruption during the construction of one of Harare’s more prominent post-independence high-rise construction projects, Angwa City, at the apex of Julius Nyerere Way and Angwa Street.

Given the circumstances surrounding his hurried departure from Zimbabwe, 16 years ago on December 10, 1999, his brazen bid now for high office at ZIFA can only be on the basis of a cynical assumption on his part, as well as on the part of his supporters, that Zimbabwe is after all just another corruption-ridden Third World country.

“IT’s MY TIME — JUUL”, screamed the headline that ran across the back page of Daily News on Monday.

“I trust in God and who can be against you when He is for you. This is absolutely God’s plan and come next Saturday you will see. I trust in God.”

It is ironical that the newspaper on whose back page Carelse-Juul now boasts his God-backed invincibility is the same Daily News, which in its infancy, investigated and exposed allegations of serious corruption against him, forcing him to flee while leaving his co-accused Sipepa Nkomo behind to face the music.

Carelse-Juul’s candidature appears to be benefiting from the poisonous polarisation now suffocating Zimbabwe’s media landscape.

He appears to be benefiting in 2015 from the fact that back in 1999, when he was exposed, Daily News was only a little known fledgling newspaper.

On October 15, 2015, I penned an article which appeared in The Herald.

It questioned the credentials of Carelse-Juul as aspiring ZIFA president given his dark and allegedly fraudulent past in relation to the Angwa City project.

That article placed in the public domain the full details of the allegations of corruption and fraud contained in the thick dossier that had been placed at the disposal of the Daily News.

Carelse-Juul hurriedly departed for Johannesburg on December 10, 1999, on the very day that Daily News published the details of its investigations.

He promised to provide the newspaper on his return the following week with a full account in response to the serious allegations of corruption and fraud levelled against him and Sipepa Nkomo

He never returned to do so.

Neither of them ever challenged the Daily News exposure of their alleged corruption and fraud.

During an interview which I did, in the company of the late journalist, Julius Zava, with Carelse-Juul, in his posh offices, the businessman became a major source of the information used by the newspaper to construct the article that exposed the Angwa City Scandal.

As far as I am concerned, the controversy surrounding Carelse-Juul’s candidature was never over matters of impropriety on his part within the realm of the administration of football.

It is up to the domestic football fraternity, if they now so wish, to let sleeping dogs lie because Carelse-Juul denied the police an opportunity to investigate the allegations against him by fleeing from Zimbabwe and settling in South Africa, while he was fully aware that he was a person of interest in the eyes of the police.

Not only did Sam Sipepa Nkomo lose his lucrative job at MIPF, as a result of his involvement in this scandal, he was subsequently prosecuted. The charges against him were, however, withdrawn before plea, ostensibly, so that the police would conduct further investigations into the case, presumably by interviewing Carelse-Juul, his alleged accomplice.

Miraculously, the case appears to have died an unnatural death, while the docket gathered dust on some shelf.

“Through the fraudulent activities of the accused,” read the charge sheet referring to Sipepa Nkomo, “MIPF suffered an actual prejudice of Z$3 million.”

This was a substantial amount of money at the time.

My article of October 15, 2015, contained comprehensive details of the corruption and fraud that Carelse-Juul and Sipepa Nkomo stood accused of.

I assume Carelse-Juul feels justified in pursuing the presidency of ZIFA, given that Sipepa Nkomo, proceeded to become the executive chairman of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, courtesy of the benevolence of the illustrious Strive Masiyiwa of Econet, who had become majority shareholder of ANZ.

He subsequently became a Member of Parliament representing the MDC-T and then Minister of Water Resources in the Government of National Unity.

Now, as national chairman in Tendai Biti’s National Democratic Party, Sipepa Nkomo is poised to scale even greater heights on Zimbabwe’s political landscape.

I used the detailed Daily News allegations against them as material for my book, “Against the Grain, Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman”, which was published in 2006.

In 2008, two years after “Against the Grain” was published Carelse-Juul, did make a feeble attempt to institute legal proceedings for defamation against my publishers, Random House Struik (Pvt) Ltd of Cape Town and me.

Our lawyers in Cape Town requested me to prepare a defence outline on the basis of which they would prepare our defence.

I assured the lawyers that I was committed to defending both the publisher and myself against any proceedings for defamation either threatened or actually instituted by Carelse-Juul.

“At the time of writing the manuscript for ‘Against the Grain’, the three-year proscription period within which Mr (Carelse) Juul could institute legal proceedings against Daily News, had lapsed in December 2002,” I pointed out.

“It was, therefore, my assumption that Mr (Carelse) Juul found no valid cause to challenge the allegations published in Daily News about him and that the allegations were, therefore, a matter of correct record about his alleged involvement at the Mining Industry Pension Fund.”

Carelse-Juul’s lawyers effectively backed off this case.

Presumably, they were satisfied that their client was not innocent in the face of allegations published against him in the Daily News and in “Against the Grain” and advised him accordingly .

I believe if a thorough and professional job had been done, in terms of pursuing the Angwa City scandal to its logical conclusion, Trevor Carelse-Juul would not have the temerity to stand up in public to declare himself a clean candidate for the ZIFA elections, while repeatedly and shamelessly invoking the name of God the Almighty in vain.

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