Harare land developer Georgios Katsimberis has made a High Court application seeking to force deputy prosecutor general Michael Reza to take to the witness stand to answer questions about his alleged unprofessional conduct during a trial.
Katsimberis, who has been put on the dock over an alleged fraud he committed against businessman Ken Sharpe’s Pokugara Properties, accuses Reza, the prosecutor in the case, of deliberately lying in a bid to secure his conviction.
He has repeatedly accused Reza and the presiding magistrate Vongai Guriro of being biased towards Sharpe and his company Pokugara Properties.
The two have, however, refused to recuse themselves from the case despite the allegations of bias.
Katsimberis also wants to the High Court to overturn a judgement by Guriro where she ruled against an application to have Reza put under cross examination.
The property developer wants to be allowed to approach the Constitutional Court (ConCourt) challenging the alleged violation of his rights during the long running trial.
At the close of his application for referral to the ConCourt before Guriro, Katsimberis’ lawyer Tinomuda Chinyoka demanded that Reza should be put on the witness stand to face questions about his alleged transgressions.
Reza opposed the application saying it would damage the reputation of the court and Guriro ruled in his favour.
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Katsimberis immediately made an urgent High Court application challenging Guriro’s ruling and demanded that his trial must be halted until the magistrate’s ruling is reviewed.
According to the application dated February 13, his lawyer Chenesai Nhimbe of Mahuni and Mutatu Legal Practitioners said Reza’s conduct during the application for referral to the ConCourt was prejudicial to his client.
This included a refusal by Reza to supply Katsimberis with state papers as he insisted that no one, "big or small, tall or short, dead or alive" can make him provide those papers.
“Michael Reza has lied to the court on several times, including claiming that the applicant reported his case against the complainants three months after the complainants reported theirs on the same facts when the opposite is not only true but demonstrably so from the state's own papers,” Nhimbe said.
He said Reza also lied about the reasons why previous prosecutors had dropped from the case as well as consorting with third parties connected with the complainants.
Nhimbe said this included bringing third parties to hearings where their presence was neither 'appropriate nor necessary, and stated in court that this was because they had "a personal interest in the outcome of the case"
Reza was also accused of being behind the manipulation of transcripts of Katsimberis’ trial proceedings.
“Because of these allegations and more have been made in the application for referral to the Constitutional Court, the applicant decided to call Michael Reza to the witness stand to testify under oath as to these facts,” the certificate of urgency accompanying Katsimberis’ application reads.
Nhimbe insisted that Reza was competent to testify and accused Guriro of arrogating to herself a discretion that she did not have and purporting to interpret the constitution as not permitting the calling of a state prosecutor to testify.
He demanded that Reza should be censured because he ignored the duty to lay before the court credible evidence in his desperate pursuit for a conviction.
He said the top prosecutor’s conduct fell short of the bar laid by the law and bordered on criminality.
Katsimberis said he was strongly convinced that Reza was paid by Sharpe to do his bidding in court.
“As appears from the application for review, I caused my lawyers to call Michael Reza to testify in the application for referral to the Constitutional Court because so many aspects of my application hinge on his unlawful conduct,” he said in the High Court application.
“The court cannot possibly decide without hearing from him.”
In his response through proseucutor Tozivepi Mapfuwa, Reza said Katsimberis’ application should be dismissed because he did not exhaust available remedies such as seeking the recusal of the magistrate and demanding a review of the judgment should the application fail.
He also said the application for referral to the ConCourt should also be dismissed.
“The calling on him to explain and or clarify allegations of his misdeeds or unlawful act is tantamount to placing him on trial and defending himself against the applicant's averments,” Mapfuwa said.
“In any case, the referral application is misplaced, and this point need not detain this court any further.”
Reza’s responding affidavit dated February15 came after High Court judge Justice Munamato Mutevedzi ordered his lawyer. Mapfukwa to respond to Katsimberis’ application when they appeared before him on Thursday.
