Minor can’t be director - PACRA boss …testifies in Kambwili forgery case

PATENTS and Companies Registration Agency (PACRA) Registrar Anthony Bwembya yesterday told the Lusaka Magistrates’ Court that a minor cannot be a director in a company.

Mr Bwembya, , testified before Principal Resident Magistrate David Simusamba that under section 207 of the Companies Act, a minor is not eligible to be director.

“It is not possible for a minor to be director. A minor cannot execute a document and cannot even issue a power of attorney,” Mr. Bwembya said.

This is in a case where Roan member of Parliament and National Democratic Congress (NDC) consultant Chishimba Kambwili is charged with forgery and uttering a false document relating to registration of his Mwamona Engineering and Technical Services (METS).

The registration document indicated Kambwili’s son Mwamba as one of the directors when he was still a minor at the time of registration in 2001.

Mr. Bwembya said around October 2013, he received a call from Kambwili, when he was still minister, requesting him to verify whether it was correct that his company had outstanding annual returns.

He said Kambwili told him that as far as he was concerned, METS was up to date with the annual returns.

“I called and told him that there was only one outstanding annual return for 2012-2013. He said he was going to send his driver to bring the returns. The gentleman came to file the returns and the document the man had was Form 71 ‘no changes return’,” Mr. Bwembya said.

He said the procedure at PACRA was that if a person was signing on behalf of a prescribed person, they must have the power of attorney and that any document not accompanied by the power of attorney was not accepted. In cross examination by defence lawyer Keith Mweemba, Mr. Bwembya said he did not physically deal with Kambwili but the two dealt on the phone, adding that the Roan MP did not utter any document.

He said he could not tell if information Kambwili gave to PACRA was false or true, and that it was not to his knowledge that the latter had forged a document.

Mr. Bwembya said PACRA had not complained to any law enforcement agency about anyone forging a document.

He said if a minor is a director in a company whose documents were wrongly accepted by PACRA, the agency should advise the company to rectify the anomaly. “We have power to prosecute if an anomaly constitutes an offence. We have not prosecuted anyone over Mwamona,” he said.