Home Link scam exposed

They accuse the Zimbabwean businessman Masimba Msipa, the son of the Midlands governor and resident minister Cephas Msipa, of failing to deliver after taking their hard-earned foreign currency. Under the scheme, Zimbabweans in exile can send money home through the Reserve Bank, which then releases the local equivalent to one of a number of participating local businessmen for the construction of homes. According to Tendai Mauchaza, who has been sending money home under the terms of the scheme for nine months, the plans for the Spanish villa that was supposed to have been built for him were changed without his knowledge or permission. The house has not been finished. Construction sub-standard, and neither the keys nor the title-deeds have been handed over as promised by Msipa. “We were promised that the houses would be finished within six months, that the keys and the title deeds would be handed over within that period. Nothing of the sort has happened. I also understand from a relative who has been to inspect the property that the bricks used to build the house were sub-standard, home-made bricks, which have crumbled in the rain,” Mauchaza told The Zimbabwean this week. He said Msipa had sub-divided his Charlottesbrooke farm near Domboshawa into quarter-acre plots on which he had been building the houses under the Home Link scheme. “We were told that the houses would be in Borrowdale Brooke – but now I have found out that the place is actually 26km beyond Borrowdale and is, in fact, nowhere near Borrowdale Brooke,” said Mauchaza. According to him, Msipa sold the Spanish-style villas, on quarter-acre plots, for the sum of -23 000 each (about Z$3.4 billion) – payable over five years at -388 per month. Buyers were promised they could take possession after six months and continue paying off the balance. Another London-based Zimbabwean, who did not want to be identified, said he had walked away from the scheme – and his money – after paying for seven months. He said construction of the house had not even begun. “Every time I phone Msipa, he switches off his mobile phone,” he said. When The Zimbabwean repeatedly tried to contact Msipa on a mobile phone number in Zimbabwe, the network provider’s automated service informed us that the phone was switched off and we should please try later. The Home Link brochure gives several mobile and landline telephone numbers in the UK. One of the mobile numbers is answered by a woman who says she has nothing to do with Home Link and does not know how her number ended up on their website. The landline numbers go unanswered.