Tinashe Madava,Staff Reporter
CONTROVERSIAL Indian businessman, Jayesh Shah is pulling out of Zimbabwe amid indications that he is frustrated over high default rates from various companies owing his empire large sums of money.
Shah runs Al Shams Global Ltd, a small finance house based in Dubai that has been providing bridging finance and structured finance to various corporates and financial institutions in the southern region and West Africa.
He also runs Gift Investments, which imported buses for the Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO around 2005.
Shah has, however, court controversy due to his shrewd lending practices.
A number of business people have ended up crossing swords with him in the courts of law after defaulting on payments.
Shah is at the centre of embattled businessman, Patterson Timba's problems. Timba's failure to repay loans advanced to him by the businessman plunged ReNaissance Financial Holdings Limited (RFHL) into problems.
The businessman lent Timba's ReNaissance Merchant Bank (RMB) US$5 million in 2009 ostensibly to meet the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe's (RBZ)'s minimum capital requirement. Between September 2009 and April 2010, Timba and RFHL borrowed a total of US$10 million from Shah and his companies, which they failed to repay in full, triggering a financial storm at RMB, which resulted in the merchant bank going under recuperative curatorship last year.
Some of the local business people that have ended up fighting court battles with Shah include Oliver Chidawu of Kuchi Holdings; Chri-stopher Goromonzi, a former director with Trust Hold-ings and Daniel Shumba of TeleAccess.
Shah came under the media spotlight in 2004 after King-dom Bank Limited (KBL) filed an appl-ication in the High Court of Zimbabwe seeking to reco-ver US$900?000 from Saturn Tra-ding and Invest-ments, a company dire-ctly link-ed to Shah. The suit emanated from a deal entered into between Shah's Saturn Trading Investments company and the bank in 2002.
Media reports suggest that in April 2002, KMB entered into an agreement with Shah through Saturn to advance US$4 million for onward landing to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. KMB alleges that Saturn was overpaid during the settlement of the loan.
Responding to the allegations, Shah demanded an explanation from KMB as to how his company fraudulently profiteered from the deal.
He was also the State's main witness in the conviction of former ZUPCO chairperson, Charles Nherera for allegedly soliciting for a US$85 000 bribe to award a tender for the importation of a fleet of buses. Nherera's conviction was later quashed after he had already served a three-year sentence.
"Just not (sic) be evasive to your question I can confirm that we do not have the expertise, time and patience to continue dragging borrowers to court as and when they default. It's no secret the default rate in Zimbabwe is quite high," said Shah in an email to this paper.
"We have presence in other countries and our group feels we may be better of being away from Zimbabwe rather than continue having our monies stuck in Zimbabwe," Shah added.
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