By By Wilson T Mtetwa
Assets belonging to a once promising, technology enterprise, Valley Technology, sadly went under the hammer few days ago with new ownership wrangles surfacing
Valley Technology, property hogged the spot light after the company failed to redeem itself from a long outstanding debt which resulted on its assets being auctioned this Wednesday .
Spiritage Group, a Telecoms firm the former owner of Valley Technology, and the brain child behind Brodacom separated themselves from the company basing on its acquisition by AfrAsia Kingdom Bank Zimbabwe (AKBZ) in January this year.
According to Spiritage Group chief executive officer, Zachary Wazara he says an agreement was already made between his company and AKBZ on December 12 last year, hence the entity was no longer their baby
Prior to that transaction Valley Technology was a subsidiary of Spiritage Group
A swap deal was sealed resulting on AKBZ being a majority shareholder with 80% and a remainder held by a separate investment vehicle.
On the contrary, an announcement made by AKBZ through an advertisement that Valley Technology assets including office and telecoms equipment would be auctioned on Wednesday sparked rage from the Spiritage group.
During a press Conference, Wazara made it clear that the two companies agreed to swap the $14 million debt owned by Spiritage to AfrAsia into equity in December last year. In his words he said “Kingdom has been running the company for the last five months. It’s a shock for us because Valley Technology is not owned by Spiritage; from where we sit, a transfer transaction was done in January” .
Wazara disclosed that Kingdom bank had to skirt the Reserve Bank Of Zimbabwe (RBZ) regulations by using a certain investment company identified as Lalela, which is owned by Kingdom to settle the transfer deal.
“Kingdom assured us that all the debts were passed on to Lalela trading as it took over all the loans that Valley Technology had”, said Wazara.
In his closing remarks Wazara said AKBZ was only suing itself as they now owned Valley Technology.
The auction was reported a success with all furniture sold excluding base stations which are still awaiting confirmation by Kingdom.
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