HARARE lawyer Linda Kovi yesterday appeared in court charged with possession of a fake practising certificate she allegedly acquired in 2020.
Kovi (34) of Kanoti and Partners Public Interest lawyers was granted US$300 by magistrate Stanford Mambanje who remanded the matter to August 7 pending finalisation of investigations.
The complainant is the State represented by Joe Zimba, a finance and administration manager for the Council for Legal Education (CLE).
Allegations are that sometime in 2019, Kovi graduated from the University of Africa in Lusaka, Zambia, with a bachelor of laws degree.
She was supposed to obtain a certificate of conversion with the CLE to practise in Zimbabwe.
In 2020, she enrolled with the CLE, sat for examinations for four modules in June 2020.
She allegedly passed one module and failed in three others.
She went on to register and sit for the civil procedure, statutes and ethics modules, and failed.
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Investigations proved that she also did not write the bookkeeping module as required.
She allegedly later bribed a CLE employee to facilitate the printing of a certificate.
The employee allegedly gave the money to CLE executive secretary Huggins Hardwork Duri who is already on remand.
Kovi allegedly approached the High Court of Zimbabwe and applied to be admitted as a legal practitioner and was duly admitted after presenting the ‘fake’certificate.
