News / National
Mnangagwa appointments scandal
12 Jan 2024 at 03:15hrs | Views
Transmedia Corporation's new board approved by President Emmerson Mnangagwa has integrity issues around its chairperson Phillipa Magnify Phillips-Sadza and Jonathan Gandari, comprising its credibility.
This comes after Mnangagwa appointed his niece Helliate Rushwaya as new Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation board chair two days ago.
Mnangagwa's government is stuffed with relatives, loyalists and cronies appointed along patronage, regional and ethnic lines.
Phillips-Sadza has been involved in some scandals, while Gandari is a Ministry of Information senior official. He is currently acting Information ministry permanent secretary.
Two days ago, he announced the new Transmedia board, which included himself.
His entanglement compromises the new board's integrity and credibility.
Transmedia is a local television and radio signal multiplexer.
Mnangagwa approved its new board for appointment two days ago.
Phillips-Sadza, a well-connected local lawyer who runs Phillips Law which is based in Newlands, Harare, was appointed board chair.
A lawyer by profession and a managing partner at Phillips Law, Phillips-Sadza, whose boutique law firm specialises in immigration, citizenship, compliance and corporate law, is well-connected with officials in government.
She has been given high-level assignments, including being a member of a presidentially-appointed tribunal to investigate allegations of gross misconduct against fired Justice Thompson Mabhikwa.
Tribunal was chaired by retired Justice November Mtshiya and included Chaka Mashoko and Phillips-Sadza.
Initially, Mnangagwa had appointed retired Justice Maphios Cheda to chair the tribunal, but he recused himself saying he was related to the lady, Oratile Nare, who was then an assistant to a fellow Bulawayo judge, who had leaked his nudes and vulgar WhatsApp messages from Mabhikwa's phone to various platforms.
Nare, then assistant to Justice Maxwell Takuva, posted Mabhikwa's nudes and dirty messages to all his contacts and judges' group before they immediately went viral, forcing the Judicial Service Commission to launch a probe and subsequently Mnangagwa to appoint a tribunal.
Mabhikwa was found guilty and eventually fired in 2022.
However, Phillips-Sadza has serious integrity issues after she was entangled in several unsavoury cases, one of them a corrupt airline project that was run the late former president Robert Mugabe's son-in-law Simba Chikore.
The other a conflict of interest issue involving telecoms giant Econet.
Phillips-Sadza also became an elusive witness in a kidnapping case between Chikore and his then workmate Bertha Zakeyo in 2017.
The case went to court and Phillips-Sadza was supposed to be a witness, but she had a battle with prosecutors as she resisted testifying, ironically citing a conflict of interest as she claimed to be a lawyer for both Chikore and Zakeyo, her colleagues at the corrupt and ill-fated ZimAirways project.
In 2021, a Harare-based innovator and entrepreneur, Ignatius Munengwa reported Phillips-Sadza to the Law Society of Zimbabwe for failing to declare her conflict of interest when she represented his company M-Comm Africa (Pvt) Ltd against Econet in High Court cases HC8299/17 and HC7734/19.
Munengwa was accusing Econet of intellectual property theft after it allegedly stole an idea he had presented to it for a partnership business venture.
He said Phillips-Sadza acted in bad faith as his lawyer because she had an undeclared conflict of interest.
Munengwa said Phillips-Sadza was running an Econet Shop business with her husband Gwinyai Sadza offering various services, while she represented him in a case against Econet at the same time.
She did not disclose her conflict of interest, he says.
Her husband, Sadza, also worked with her at her law firm, Phillips Law, where he was head of IT.
After Munengwa filed the case against Phillips-Sadza, the Law Society of Zimbabwe initially found her innocent, ignoring overwhelming evidence of a clear conflict.
Munengwa then reported the matter to Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and she was later arrested before being released on bail.
The issue is now with the National Prosecution Authority pending prosecution, although there has been inordinate delays on that.
As a result, the Law Society of Zimbabwe was subsequently forced to reverse its decision and advised Munengwa in June 2022 that they would review the matter.
However, the law society has not done practically anything meaningful since then.
Lawyers always say justice delayed is justice denied, yet in this case the law society has failed to deal with the matter professionally, promptly and fairly.
In 2017, Phillips-Sadza was also deeply involved in the corrupt ZimAirways project, which involved formation of the new airline to replace Air Zimbabwe through the back door and buying of planes - used Boeing 777s and Embraers for US$70 million.
The saga sucked in national flag carrier Air Zimbabwe and some ministers.
Former Transport minister Jorum Gumbo, a close Mnangagwa political ally, was entangled in the aircraft purchase scandal which involved Air Zimbabwe and ZimAirways.
The saga has also sucked in ex-Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa.
Gumbo and Chinamasa's claim was that the four Boeing 777-200 were bought from Malaysia Airlines through their sole agent PricewaterhouseCoopers Kuala Lumpur, but they were being leased to ZimAirways by the Zimbabwe Aviation Leasing Company (ZALC) in which Phillips-Sadza was a board member.
They claimed ZimAirways and ZALC were government-owned. But Gumbo maintained the two were private companies owned by Zimbabwean diasporans.
The initial arrangement was that two of the Rolls Royce-powered planes would cost US$16,5 million each, while the other two would be bought for US$18,5 million apiece, bringing the total to US$70 million.
But Gumbo and his associates later decided to buy two Boeing 777s for US$18,5 million and US$16,5 million, a total of US$35 million.
It was also later resolved to buy two Embraers for US$6 million using Treasury Bills.
This brought the total of the revised deal to US$41 million.
Background
Phillipa Magnify Phillips-Sadza is a lawyer by profession and a Managing Partner at Phillips Law, a local boutique law firm specialising in immigration; citizenship, compliance and corporate law.
Phillis-Sadza obtained her BA (Private Law and French) and then an LLB degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
She proceeded to obtain a Master of Laws (LLM) from Temple University in Pennsylvania, United States. Phillips-Sadza sits on various board and serves as trustee of several other organisations. Phillips-Sadza is involved with the World Bank Doing Business in Zimbabwe and is the current country consultant for the review of Companies Act [Chapter 24:03].
This comes after Mnangagwa appointed his niece Helliate Rushwaya as new Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation board chair two days ago.
Mnangagwa's government is stuffed with relatives, loyalists and cronies appointed along patronage, regional and ethnic lines.
Phillips-Sadza has been involved in some scandals, while Gandari is a Ministry of Information senior official. He is currently acting Information ministry permanent secretary.
Two days ago, he announced the new Transmedia board, which included himself.
His entanglement compromises the new board's integrity and credibility.
Transmedia is a local television and radio signal multiplexer.
Mnangagwa approved its new board for appointment two days ago.
Phillips-Sadza, a well-connected local lawyer who runs Phillips Law which is based in Newlands, Harare, was appointed board chair.
A lawyer by profession and a managing partner at Phillips Law, Phillips-Sadza, whose boutique law firm specialises in immigration, citizenship, compliance and corporate law, is well-connected with officials in government.
She has been given high-level assignments, including being a member of a presidentially-appointed tribunal to investigate allegations of gross misconduct against fired Justice Thompson Mabhikwa.
Tribunal was chaired by retired Justice November Mtshiya and included Chaka Mashoko and Phillips-Sadza.
Initially, Mnangagwa had appointed retired Justice Maphios Cheda to chair the tribunal, but he recused himself saying he was related to the lady, Oratile Nare, who was then an assistant to a fellow Bulawayo judge, who had leaked his nudes and vulgar WhatsApp messages from Mabhikwa's phone to various platforms.
Nare, then assistant to Justice Maxwell Takuva, posted Mabhikwa's nudes and dirty messages to all his contacts and judges' group before they immediately went viral, forcing the Judicial Service Commission to launch a probe and subsequently Mnangagwa to appoint a tribunal.
Mabhikwa was found guilty and eventually fired in 2022.
However, Phillips-Sadza has serious integrity issues after she was entangled in several unsavoury cases, one of them a corrupt airline project that was run the late former president Robert Mugabe's son-in-law Simba Chikore.
The other a conflict of interest issue involving telecoms giant Econet.
Phillips-Sadza also became an elusive witness in a kidnapping case between Chikore and his then workmate Bertha Zakeyo in 2017.
The case went to court and Phillips-Sadza was supposed to be a witness, but she had a battle with prosecutors as she resisted testifying, ironically citing a conflict of interest as she claimed to be a lawyer for both Chikore and Zakeyo, her colleagues at the corrupt and ill-fated ZimAirways project.
In 2021, a Harare-based innovator and entrepreneur, Ignatius Munengwa reported Phillips-Sadza to the Law Society of Zimbabwe for failing to declare her conflict of interest when she represented his company M-Comm Africa (Pvt) Ltd against Econet in High Court cases HC8299/17 and HC7734/19.
Munengwa was accusing Econet of intellectual property theft after it allegedly stole an idea he had presented to it for a partnership business venture.
He said Phillips-Sadza acted in bad faith as his lawyer because she had an undeclared conflict of interest.
Munengwa said Phillips-Sadza was running an Econet Shop business with her husband Gwinyai Sadza offering various services, while she represented him in a case against Econet at the same time.
She did not disclose her conflict of interest, he says.
Her husband, Sadza, also worked with her at her law firm, Phillips Law, where he was head of IT.
After Munengwa filed the case against Phillips-Sadza, the Law Society of Zimbabwe initially found her innocent, ignoring overwhelming evidence of a clear conflict.
Munengwa then reported the matter to Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and she was later arrested before being released on bail.
The issue is now with the National Prosecution Authority pending prosecution, although there has been inordinate delays on that.
As a result, the Law Society of Zimbabwe was subsequently forced to reverse its decision and advised Munengwa in June 2022 that they would review the matter.
However, the law society has not done practically anything meaningful since then.
Lawyers always say justice delayed is justice denied, yet in this case the law society has failed to deal with the matter professionally, promptly and fairly.
In 2017, Phillips-Sadza was also deeply involved in the corrupt ZimAirways project, which involved formation of the new airline to replace Air Zimbabwe through the back door and buying of planes - used Boeing 777s and Embraers for US$70 million.
The saga sucked in national flag carrier Air Zimbabwe and some ministers.
Former Transport minister Jorum Gumbo, a close Mnangagwa political ally, was entangled in the aircraft purchase scandal which involved Air Zimbabwe and ZimAirways.
The saga has also sucked in ex-Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa.
Gumbo and Chinamasa's claim was that the four Boeing 777-200 were bought from Malaysia Airlines through their sole agent PricewaterhouseCoopers Kuala Lumpur, but they were being leased to ZimAirways by the Zimbabwe Aviation Leasing Company (ZALC) in which Phillips-Sadza was a board member.
They claimed ZimAirways and ZALC were government-owned. But Gumbo maintained the two were private companies owned by Zimbabwean diasporans.
The initial arrangement was that two of the Rolls Royce-powered planes would cost US$16,5 million each, while the other two would be bought for US$18,5 million apiece, bringing the total to US$70 million.
But Gumbo and his associates later decided to buy two Boeing 777s for US$18,5 million and US$16,5 million, a total of US$35 million.
It was also later resolved to buy two Embraers for US$6 million using Treasury Bills.
This brought the total of the revised deal to US$41 million.
Background
Phillipa Magnify Phillips-Sadza is a lawyer by profession and a Managing Partner at Phillips Law, a local boutique law firm specialising in immigration; citizenship, compliance and corporate law.
Phillis-Sadza obtained her BA (Private Law and French) and then an LLB degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
She proceeded to obtain a Master of Laws (LLM) from Temple University in Pennsylvania, United States. Phillips-Sadza sits on various board and serves as trustee of several other organisations. Phillips-Sadza is involved with the World Bank Doing Business in Zimbabwe and is the current country consultant for the review of Companies Act [Chapter 24:03].
Source - newshawks
