Adelcraft war : Gilad dismisses High Court ruling

Harare – BUSINESSMAN Gilad Shabtai has dismissed a High Court ruling by judge Justice Tawanda Chitapi granting relief sought by applicants Ofer Sivan and Adlecraft Investments ording him and his co-accused Munyaradzi Gonyora to reimburse USD1,300,000.

Chitapi on Wednesday granted the relief sought by Sivan and Adlecraft Investments and ordered the defendants Shabtai and Gonyora to reimburse USD1,300,000.

This comes after Gilad went to court sometime last year accusing Sivan and Myburg of conniving and forging the signatures on a Stanbic Bank account opening forms which alleging that the move prejudiced other shareholders of more than US$200 000.

But Shabtai’s legal counsel, Admire Rubaya has dismissed the ruling, telling Express Mail Zim that Ofer Sivan snatched a default judgment without giving his client notice of hearing of the matter and ignoring the special plea filed against Ofer Sivan’s legal action.

“This is a judgment wherein the court has not dealt with the merits of the case. It is a technical judgment which was, in our view, granted in error, as we shall expose in due course,” Rubaya said.

“Our client asserts that the other party, Ofer Sivan, knows very well that our client has an unassailable defence that is why he has rushed to snatch a technical judgment wherein he did not endeavour to inform the other party of the set down of that matter for hearing. This is particularly surprising where our clients had raised a technical objection in the form of a special plea and an exception which were never dealt with and the Court related to the matter as if our clients had not raised any defence at all.”

“Now that there is an order granted in default we shall take the necessary steps to approach the court and rectify this error.”

“We have realised that the other party has gone to town celebrating a technical judgment in circumstances where that party did not place before the court the whole gamut of circumstances relating to the matter.”

Chitapi, in case 4541/21, had ordered Shabtai and Gonyora to reimburse USD1,300,000.

“The defendants be and are hereby declared to have committed acts of fraud against the second plaintiff’ company from the period between March 2021 and August 2021,” read the ruling.

“The defendants be and are hereby declared to have misappropriated funds for the second plaintiff company to the tune of US 1300 000 for the period between March 2021 and August 2021.”

Chitapi further stated: “The defendants be and are hereby ordered jointly and severally the one absolving the other to reimburse the said US 1 300 000.00 or the Zimbabwean dollar equivalent at the prevailing interbank rate on the date of payment paid into the second plaintiff’s denominated account within ten (10) days of this court’s order.

“The defendants be and are hereby ordered jointly and severally the one absolving the other to pay interest on the sum of US 1 300 000.00 at 5% per annum from the date of summons to the date of payment.”

Chitapi ordered that the defendants be removed from the directorship “of the second plaintiff by order of this court. First plaintiff must accordingly bring this to the attention of the Registrar of Companies.

The tiff between the two erstwhile business partners has dragged for a long time and it’s highly likely that the recent ruling will be challenged in the court of law.