Ex-employee in court for transferring data to anot...

Ex-employee in court for transferring data to another company

Michael Mashiri

A former Jedz Holdings employee has been arraigned before the court accused of transferring the company's documents to another company.

Advisor Makuyana, 25, of Southlea Park, appeared before magistrate Dennis Mangosi at the Harare Magistrates' Courts for contravening the Data Protection Act.

The complainant in this matter is Jedz Holdings, represented by its chief security officer Shaun Edward Granger, 44.

He was ordered to appear in court on February 23 and was ordered to deposit US$100 as bail.

The State, through prosecutor Rufaro Chonzi, alleges that Makuyana was employed by Jedz Holdings from October 22, 2022 and later resigned on December 21, 2023.On December 19, 2023, Makuyana allegedly transferred the company documents from his work laptop through his official email account to his personal email account as well as to the email of the company he was about to join, Vision Artificial Intelligent where he was employed as product manager.

The transferred documents included client data base, hotels data base, company profile, products data base and proposals, memorandum of agreements, memorandum of understanding, expression of scope of work among others.

It is alleged that Makuyana transferred these documents without authority from his employer.

The offence was discovered by the systems administrator at Drone Solutions on December 20, 2023, when he went through the laptop which was used by Makuyana as it was to be handed over to a new employee replacing Makuyana.

The State alleges that what Makuyana did was unlawful as he was not authorised to transfer the company's confidential documents and data to another company in the same line of business with Jedz Holdings.