Court upholds ruling in titanic family business feud

Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court has ruled that businessman Farai Matsika tried to illegally wrest ownership of Croco Holdings from the rightful owner Moses Chingwena. Justice Chinembiri ruled that Matsika had submitted fraudulent documents in the court papers he filed. The cousins spent more than 20 years building the Harare-based vehicle parts firm which has 466 employees and generates more than $100m in annual sales. In an earlier ruling, High Court judge Justice Owen Tagu had accused Matsiki of ‘trying to grab the company through the back door’. Matsika was seeking to have the High Court ruling set aside and a the establishment of a forensic audit and valuation of Croco Holdings and 39 other entities. New Zimbabwe reports that Bhunu upheld that ruling. ‘In view of Matsika’s deplorable unbecoming behaviour in manufacturing fraudulent documents to deceive the court, costs at the punitive scale were eminently deserved in the court a quo,’ he ruled. Matsika claimed he had built the Croco business empire for 26 years while Chingwena was working elsewhere.