Zimbabwean Vice President Constantino Chiwenga’s estranged wife was charged with trying to kill her husband when she appeared in a Harare court on Monday, reported Reuters.
The Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) arrested Marry Mubaiwa on Saturday on money laundering and fraud charges. She is accused of illegally transferring $900,000 to South Africa and fraudulently seeking to upgrade her customary union to civil marriage, without her husband’s consent.
She is facing six counts of exporting foreign currency in breach of the Exchange Control Act and five counts of concealing transactions involving proceeds of crime in violation of the Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Act.
According to the prosecutors, Mubaiwa had unplugged Chiwenga’s life support tubes in a South African hospital in June.
According to the charge sheet, Chiwenga’s wife first refused medical attention to him and insisted he stayed at a hotel rather than a hospital when he was flown to South Africa for emergency medical treatment.
After Chiwenga was taken to the hospital, Mubaiwa again went there and after ordering the security to leave “unlawfully removed the medical intravenous drip as well as a central venous catheter”, causing him to bleed abundantly.
The charge sheet also alleged she forced Chiwenga off the hospital bed and tried to take him out of the ward before security details intercepted them.
Mubaiwa denies all the accusations against her. Her lawyer said she would seek bail at Zimbabwe’s High Court. She was not granted bail for the initial charges after prosecutors argued she would flee the country or interfere with witnesses.
The charges follow local media reports that claim that Mubaiwa and Chiwenga were set to divorce. The Zimbabwean vice president returned to Zimbabwe in November after spending four months in a Chinese hospital where he was later treated for a blocked oesophagus.
