BY DESMOND CHINGARANDE LAND developer Kenneth Sharpe’s Augur Investments has dismissed allegations of misappropriation of council land in its response to the High Court challenging its mention in a land dispute. In court papers filed this week in response to allegations that the firm was unprocedurally awarded the Harare Airport Road rehabilitation tender, one of the respondents, Tatiana Aleshina, said the deal was above board. MDC Alliance legislator Norman Markham recently took Augur Investments to court demanding clarity on how it was given 273 hectares of land as payment for developing the airport road. He said the deal must be reversed so that desperate homeseekers can benefit. Augur Investments was cited as a respondent alongside Sharpe, Aleshina, Michael John Van Blerk, City of Harare, Local Government minister July Moyo, Doorex Properties Pvt Ltd, the Registrar of Deeds and President Emmerson Mnangagwa. In an affidavit, Augur Investments representative Aleshina said there was no need for the applicants to include them as individuals in company-related matters. “I further depose to this affidavit on behalf of Augur Investments whom I have been associated with by the applicants. It is not clear and readily apparent what the cause of action against myself, Sharpe and Blerk have been cited in this matter. This is so more particularly in that Sharpe is merely described as a ‘serious land baron’ who owns extensive land in Zimbabwe through the medium of Augur Investments. It is not competent for a person to own land through the medium of a company,” Aleshina said in her affidavit. “The company owns land in its own name as a separate legal entity. There is no valid legal basis shown why Sharpe is being cited in an action against Augur which is a company and a separate legal persona. On my own part, I am simply said to be ‘a shareholder in the first respondent as well as in the satellite operations of the 2nd respondent.’ It is bad at law to cite an individual in an action against a company merely because they are a shareholder in the company. “Even assuming a cause of action had been shown against me, it would be still incompetent to cite me in a supposed action against Sharpe merely by virtue of my association with him. I am a separate legal persona from him,” she added. Aleshina said the citation of Blerk is even more ridiculous. “He is cited merely because he is said to be an employee of Sharpe, a natural person and again a separate legal persona. In the circumstances of my citation as well as that of Sharpe and Blerk being improper and bad at law, the application as against us ought to be struck off with costs on an attorney and client scale on that basis alone,” she said. Court papers filed on March 10 show that after a series of litigations between the City of Harare and Augur Investments, a deed of settlement was executed in May 2019.  Court papers show that Herbert Gomba, the then mayor of Harare, signed for the local authority. “There is in existence a council resolution and minutes authorising Herbert Gomba