An Israeli businessman has been arrested on allegations he defrauded his business partners of more than US$200,000 after forging signatures on bank documents.

Ofer Sivan, 51, is also accused of providing false information to the High Court which led to him defrauding other shareholders of their shares in their company, Adlecraft Investments.

Sivan was not asked to plead allegations of fraud and perjury when he appeared before Harare Regional Magistrate Stanford Mambanje yesterday.

He was taken into custody until today for the continuation of his request for bail.

This was after the state opposed him on the grounds that he risked fleeing and intimidating witnesses claiming to have political connections.

The state alleges that on September 23, 2020, while working on consent with one Myburg Cassandra, who remains at large, Sivan forged the signatures of the plaintiff, Gilad Shabtai, on the account opening forms for the Stanbic Bank.

His intention, according to the State further, was to trick bank officials into opening bank accounts for Adlecraft Investments (Private) Limited on the pretext that Shabtai, as one of the directors, was involved. , but that he had not approved the opening of this account.

It is also alleged that the two also forged Shabtai’s signatures on the Adlecraft company resolution dated September 29, 2020, purporting to name Sivan as the sole signatory on the bank account.

The court heard that bank officials then opened two accounts in the name of Adelcraft Investments (Private) Limited and that Sivan became the signatory to both accounts.

It is also alleged that in November 2021, Munyaradzi Gonyora, a minority shareholder in the company, discovered the breach after learning of documents obtained from Stanbic Bank, then alerted Shabtai who then reported the matter to the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission.

The court heard that investigations revealed that Shabtai’s signatures had been forged on the company’s Resolution 0 and account opening forms, which harmed shareholders by more than $200,000 in revenue generated and nothing was recovered.

Meanwhile, in another perjury case, Sivan allegedly approached the High Court of Zimbabwe under case numbers HC4711/2021 and HC5436/2021 respectively where he fraudulently misrepresented that Adelcraft Investments (Private) Limited did not had only 20 issued shares all attributed to him.

He reportedly attached a fake share transfer certificate.

The State alleges that it was aware that there were other legal persons who held shares in the same company with Adlecraft Holdings (Private) Limited holding 49% of the shares while Razaro Mapuwapuwa, Munyaradzi Gonyora, Stephen Mangoda and Charles Chitima all held 10% of the shares while Adelcraft Investments (Private) Limited Labor Trusts had 11 per cent.

It is further alleged that Sivan signed the shareholders agreement on behalf of Adelcraft Holdings as well as all share certificates for all shareholders of Adrecraft Investments (Private) Limited which are deposited with the Zimbabwe Investment Development Authority (ZIDA).

The state also accuses Sivan of misrepresenting the High Court of Zimbabwe by sworn founding affidavits that he was the sole shareholder.

He allegedly made affidavits with the intention of harming the course of justice so that a decision would be made in his favor based on false information and also to harm other shareholders.