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Itai Mazire Herald Reporter
The Prosecutor General’s Office is preparing extradition papers for three Indian diamond businessmen who are believed to have fled to Mumbai, India, after they fraudulently elbowed out Zimbabweans from their gold mining company in Chegutu.The Indians — Nandlal, Nitin and Navneet Goenka brothers —  who own a diamond and jewellery company in Mumbai flew into  Zimbabwe sometime in April 2010.

Deputy Officer Commanding Serious Frauds section Chief Superintendent Peter Magwenzi confirmed the development saying police had since issued an international warrant of arrest for the Indians through Interpol.

“The Prosecutor General’s office is now finalising the extradition papers of the Goenka brothers who fled the country recently after they realised that we were tracking them with regards to the fraudulent change of partnership papers of a gold mining firm.

“We have since established that Navneet was arrested in India in December 2013 for transferring Nitin, his younger brother’s shares into another account without his knowledge.

“The Goenkas, working in connivance approached one Anil Pandey who is the managing director of Pure Minerals Zimbabwe and misrepresented to him that they wanted to enter into partnership in gold mining,” said Chief Supt Magwenzi.

According to police records, Pandey incorporated the Goenkas into Pure Minerals Zimbabwe (Pvt) Limited as investor shareholders and the company became a joint venture.

Pandey and other local shareholders retained 50 percent shareholding and gave the Goenkas 50 percent free shareholding on the basis that they would inject $10 million capital equipment.

On June 20, 2012, soon after the state-of-the-art machinery was set up in Chegutu and production was about to start the Goenkas, allegedly working in cahoots with one Patrick Chiwanza held a meeting to revoke the directorship and shareholding of Pandey and Hitesh Patel.  The two held 12 percent and 2 percent respectively.

Chief Supt Magwenzi said the quartet resolved to revoke the shareholding without the knowledge of other shareholders in the company that included Lalapanzi Community Trust, Kaitano Mugabe, Washington Musvaire, Sonel Popatlal and Anna Knuth.

“Armed with a fake company resolution and fraudulent shareholding certificate the quartet approached the Zimbabwe Investment Authority (ZIA) where they misrepresented that Pandey and Patel had resigned and ceded their shareholding.

“They then renewed the investment licence and the offence came to light after Pandey became suspicious of the Goenka’s actions and upon checking with ZIA, discovered that himself and Patel had their directorship revoked and had been removed from shareholding.

“Police picked up Chiwanza and he implicated the Goenkas. The misrepresentation to ZIA by the Goenkas resulted in Pandey and Patel to suffer prejudice of 12 percent and two percent shares respectively,” said Chief Supt Magwenzi.

He said the Goenkas, using the same modus operandi, removed Pandey, and his relatives Sanil and Ashok from directorship and shareholding in Prowick Investment private limited and caused them to suffer prejudice of 20 percent, seven percent and eight percent shares respectively.