Zimpapers Logo

Aguy Georgias

Tendai Mugabe Senior Reporter—
Senator Aguy Clement Georgias, who was interred at the National Heroes Acre in Harare yesterday, was a renowned fighter for justice who fought viciously through the courts of law to ensure justice for the common man.In 1996, he fought for the enforcement of the in duplum rule which holds that banks should not charge interest rates that exceed the amount borrowed. This common law rule provides that interest on a debt will cease to run where the total amount of arrear interest has accrued to an amount equal to the outstanding principal debt.

Related…….

• Senator Georgias dies
• Georgias dismisses Studio 7 claims
• Georgias confident of winning appeal
• Georgias to appeal EU court ruling

Addressing mourners at the burial of the national hero, industrialist and economic empowerment crusader, which also coincided with Unity Day celebrations, President Mugabe said Sen Georgias would not stand the extortionate behaviour by banks.

Watch video here……

“Aguy would not have had it. He successfully challenged such practices in our courts, in the process securing a judgment that promised relief to many. “But there has been lots of resistance to operationalising the tenets of that judgment, to great detriment of our economy.”

In 1996, Sen Georgias took Standard Chartered Bank to court for flouting the in duplum rule which forbids charging more than 100 percent interest on loans.

Watch video here…..

Sen Georgias sued the bank for $4 million Zimbabwe dollars for overcharging interests in Aguy Clement Georgias & Anor v Standard Chartered Finance Zimbabwe Limited.

He hired a South African lawyer, Mr Bruce Barman, to defend the enforcement of the law in Zimbabwe in a case where the bank was represented by Advocate Adrian de Bourbon. The entire indigenous business community and several industrialists in 1997, mobilised for confrontation with the banks and other financial institutions following the landmark rulling, but the verdict was never implemented.

President Mugabe slammed the Western justice delivery system, saying it is fraught with unwitting bias, aimed at perpetuating imperial hegemonic interests.

The Western system, the President said, was not designed to serve real justice to Africans. “They (Western courts) are never for justice. They are for the preservation of Western interests and hegemony. No white court serves real justice to an African.

“Instead of restitution, the white world does worse things — hauling Africans to unjust courts, murdering them as they did to Saddam Hussein (Iraq) and our brother Muammar Gaddafi (Libya).”

Thousands of people from different parts of the country attended the burial at the National Heroes Acre.

Sen Georgias died last Friday at the age of 80 due to heart and kidney complications. Despite the apparent bias of the Western justice system, Sen Georgias was unfazed and challenged the West’s sanctions regime in European courts, said President Mugabe.

He said Sen Georgias stood firm on the side of the injured majority in his fight against the heinous illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the European Union. “He (Sen Georgias) refused to submit to Western retribution,” he said.

“He never took it lying (down). He fought indefatigably, took the fight to the whiteman’s court literally. He challenged sanctions, using British and European court systems. “He sought compensation for himself and his people, and used his little resources to seek justice the West will never grant us, the small people of this world.

“He won that fight, won it not by way of material compensation or restitution, but by way of exposing the hypocrisy at the heart of Western legal systems.” President Mugabe said when the story of Zimbabwe’s resistance to sanctions would eventually be written, Sen Georgias’ name would rank high.

On August 21, 2007, Sen Georgias took the British government to court over the illegal sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe including his company Trinity Engineering. In his heads of argument, Sen Georgias said: “If, as we were made to believe, sanctions against Zimbabwe are meant to target those who are engaged in activities that seriously undermine democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law in Zimbabwe, then why the economic malaise on the whole nation?

Further, Sen Georgias argued, the travel ban on Government leaders, on its own was not as significant in terms of impacting the national economy but it was the restrictions on financial resources, access to lines of credit and balance of payments support that were having the deleterious effect on the economy and causing hardships.

The lawsuit came after Sen Georgias, on May 25, 2007, was denied entry into London enroute to New York where he was going to receive an international award for Trinity Engineering.

The British immigration authorities argued that they could not allow him entry because he was on the sanctions list. Although he lost the matter in the London Court of Appeal, he appealed to the General Court of the European Union in Luxemburg. The case is yet to be finalised.

His initial appeal was dismissed but it exposed that the EU common position on the travel ban and financial restrictions on Zimbabwe was not adopted on EU public policy grounds, but rather as a foreign policy stance.

In one of his many fights with the Europeans, Sen Georgias won a case against deportation of his children studying in London. However, the sanctions case, which largely touched on the nerves of the economy, was an uphill task.

Earlier in the day, President Mugabe joined two Vice Presidents Emmerson Mnangagwa and Phelekezela Mphoko, Cabinet ministers and scores of zanu-pf supporters for body viewing at Stodart Hall in Mbare. Mbare Chimurenga Choir and Zanu-PF youths entertained people during the body viewing session.