His family and cronies are also linked to the Red Wing Mine
looting, Pedzisayi “Scott” Sakupwanya’s minting of money from gold wheeling and
dealing, and now the Al Jazeera undercover investigation exposing gold barons,
their dark secrets and money laundering.
The Mnangagwa name is associated with and runs through the
different yet overlapping stories, plots and sub-plots involving the
Macmillans, Kwekwe mining activities, Red Wing Mine and Sakupwanya’s Better
Brands Jewellery, Rushwaya and now the ground-breaking Al Jazeera investigative
tour de force.
It is intertwined with these stories, sometimes solidly and
through name-dropping. Government and police have previously warned people
against name-dropping; leveraging his name for self-interest. The Macmillans —
both Ian Hugh and his son Ewan Alexander — are said to be close to Mnangagwa,
while his cronies are deeply involved in gold mining activities in Kwekwe.
Sakupwanya is associated with him and his sons, especially
Emmerson Jr. Angel is a presidential envoy and Zimbabwe’s ambassador-at-large
appointed by Mnangagwa. And Rushwaya is a relative, a niece. When she was
arrested in 2020 at Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport in Harare
trying to smuggle 6.7kg of gold valued at US$330 000, people quickly linked her
to the Mnangagwa family, with others saying the First Lady Auxillia and her son
Colins were also involved.
They swiftly denied
it. Since state institutions like the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, via its
subsidiary gold buyer Fidelity Printers and Refiners, are said to be part of
the gold-dealing networks, that draws Mnangagwa deeper into the vortex.
For a long time,
Mnangagwa’s name has been associated with the Macmillan family, notorious for
gold dealing and smuggling activities, as well as illicit trade and arrests. A
report titled Mnangagwa’s Oligarchs: The heirs of Cecil Rhodes, published by
the Daily Maverick in South Africa and other media platforms, has a section on
the Macmillans.
“Ian Macmillan and
his son Ewan have built a business milling and buying gold around the country
from their base in southwestern Zimbabwe. The elder Macmillan is among a small
but influential group of white businessmen that supports Mnangagwa’s
government,” it says.
“Although the elder Macmillan is retired, he remains
influential with his vast contacts in Zanu PF, cultivated over the last four
decades. The Macmillans, like other white business tycoons, are not immune to
the factional battles that consume the ruling party.
“They have been
arrested in the past for illegal possession of bullion and gold smuggling, but
acquitted or released after paying small fines. Ruling party sources say the
arrests are always linked to factional fights in the governing party.
“When one faction believes another is receiving more than
its fair share of ‘bribes’, it usually uses the police and the courts to send a
message, the sources say. It is a game that white Zimbabwean businessmen are
well aware of. In 2003, Macmillan and his son were arrested and charged for
smuggling gold worth about US$68 million to South Africa through a syndicate.
They were acquitted but have remained in the gold buying business.”
Kenyan tycoon and
pastor Paul Kamlesh Pattni, who was implicated in the 1990s Goldenberg scandal
which involved unusual government subsidies for gold exports, is also close to
Mnangagwa.
He is a major gold dealer. On Goldenberg, Pattniwas
acquitted in 2013. Pattni, Ewan Macmillan, Rushwaya, Angel and state
institutions are involved in the Al Jazeera exposé which features people around
Mnangagwa bragging about their proximity to power and access to him.
The interlocutors say they can easily launder dirty money —
US$100 million — from outside using what they call their laundromat — gold and
the central bank. Smelling money and sometimes in the midst of quaffing whisky,
they reveal how it is done.
Besides this, there are stunning revelations in the court
case involving Bulawayo tycoon Mohammed Zakariya Patel and his former righthand
man Ismail Moosa Lunat which exposes gold dealing, illegal currency
transactions and money laundering.
The evidence of criminality contained in court documents
and chats between Patel and Lunat covers the period from 24 May 2018 to 14
January 2019. The President’s Office is named in some of the communications
between them.
The bulk of the evidence consists of WhatsApp messages
between Patel and Lunat, records of local and international money transfers,
memorandums, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe intelligence memos, a series of
transactions that egregiously violate the Exchange Control Act, gold deals and
money laundering statutes.
Lunat was Patel’s accountant for a period stretching from
May 2018 to July 2019, hence intimately involved in his finances. When they
fell out, they took each other to curt while exposing their dirty linen in
public.
At the time, former
Zanu PF MP and minister Jonathan Moyo latched on the issue and upped the ante
against Mnangagwa.
“I’m uploading
herewith raw evidence which exposes Mnangagwa & his wife Auxillia as the
barons & beneficiaries of money laundering & gold smuggling by one
Mohamed Zakariya Patel. The evidence covers the period from 24 May 2018 to 14
January 2019!,” Moyo tweeted.
“As is often the case in such matters, the main enabler
tends to vary either their name by use of different spellings or even use of
different names. So, here you get Mohamed Zakariya Patel, or Mohamed Zakaraya
Patel or Mohammed Zackaraya Patel commonly known as ‘Zaks Patel’!
“The raw evidence consists of WhatsApp chats between
Mohamed Zakariya Patel & Ishmael Mossa Lunat; along with key documents that
backup the content of the chats. The chats specifically refer to ‘Number 1’
(Mnangagwa), ‘First lady’ (Auxillia) & ‘Pres (President’s) Office’.”
Moyo added: “The evidence is uploaded here as raw data to
enable citizens, especially the media, civil society, churches, political
parties & academia to do their own investigations to draw their own
conclusions to inform their own interventions & praxis to tackle the
crisis. Study it!
“The complete WhatsApp chats are uploaded; but highlighted
here are Mohamed Zakariya Patel’s clear & unambiguous mentions of money
laundering transactions for ‘Number 1’ (Mnangagwa) & a ‘fuming first lady’
(Auxillia); as well as visits to ‘Pres Office’ ( President’s Office)!
“Attached is the verbatim record of WhatsApp chats from 24
May 2018 to 14 January 2019 between Mohamed Zakariya Patel & Ishmael Moosa
Lunat; implicating Mnangagwa (Number 1) & his wife (first lady) Auxillia,
in money laundering and gold smuggling!
“It’s also clear from Mohamed Zakariya Patel’s Dossier that
the biggest loser in the scam is Fidelity Printers & Refineries, meaning
the people of Zimbabwe, who only get paid 45% of the value of the gold in RTGS
local currency. It’s an untold story of shocking grand looting!
“What emerges is that Mnangagwa’s so-called anti-corruption
campaign is fake. Mnangagwa has weaponised corruption, not to fight it but to
criminalise his opponents and has used that criminalisation to cover up his
& his family’s corruption as captured in the ‘Zaks Dossier’.
“The facts & the
implications of the WhatsApp chats between Patel & Lunat speak for
themselves; exposing serious crimes. The people must hold Mnangagwa & his
wife Auxillia to account, without fear or favour. State House is now a looting
haven!”
Mnangagwa’s spokesperson George Charamba refused to
comment, saying he could not respond to snippets.
“What do you want from The NewsHawks, I don’t want to talk
to you. What do you want to ask? Get lost, I don’t want to engage you on
something which is not yours and secondly which has not yet played. You want me
to speculate on a documentary which has not yet played? I don’t know about it
because snippets are decontextualised. You think a snippet is a programme. I
don’t respond to snippets,” Charamba said.
In the Al Jazeera
case, the allure of making millions of dollars overnight through providing
money laundering services — including a promise to provide a US$10 million
payment to one of the gold dealers — and peddling proximity to power while
quaffing fine whisky got Zimbabwe’s underworld gold barons into the Qatar-based
international broadcaster Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit’s net.
The Investigative
Unit’s mission is to act in the public interest in order to expose wrongdoing
and speak truth to power. It operates under codes of practice of Britain’s
Office of Communications which supports the finest traditions of public service
journalism.
In its exclusive
report titled Unveiling Zimbabwe’s Dark Secrets, Al Jazeera, judging by the
film’s trailer and the threaded together snippets, exposes dirty money around
gold dealing and laundering, as well as greed and looting.
Also subtitled Gold Mafia, the investigative news
documentary has managed to whet Zimbabweans’ appetite, becoming the talk of the
town this week. The trailer or preview advert trended in the country for days.
Gold Mafia features Zimbabwean politicians, their cronies, government officials
and gold dealers, as well as businesspeople caught in the crossfire, some of
them ending up as collateral damage. In terms of structure and presentation, it
is a four-part series film initially set to be released on March 2, 9, 16 and
23 2023.
The series looks at how society’s obsession with gold and
its vanity through the ages underwrites a global shadow economy and underworld
criminality. Since the dawn of civilisation, this shiny yellow metal has seduced
inhabitants of every continent and every age.
In the process, the
film exposes the complicity of politicians, state institutions, global
financial institutions, regulators and governments in the criminal underworld.
Through thousands of confidential documents and exclusive
interviews with whistle-blowers from within the underworld, investigators
obtain the blueprints of billion-dollar money laundering operations that
service the political elite and their cronies. The interface between
politicians, underworld criminal networks and dirty money is laid bare.
Al Jazeera uses undercover investigative techniques to
unearth the issue, a form of journalism in which a reporter or reporters
infiltrate a group posing as somebody friendly as a ruse to gather information
and evidence.
Across the world,
undercover investigations, carefully balanced with ethics, have produced
extraordinary, impactful journalism. In countries without public record
transparency rules or strong source protection laws, going undercover can be
one of the few tools reporters have to investigate public interest stories.
In the Al Jazeera
case, undercover reporters pose as criminals possessing more than US$1 billion
in the underworld which needs to be cleaned. The team is led by a fictitious
character, Mr Stanley, a Chinese gangster with links to the Triads, which are
Sino organised-crime networks. His undercover reporters befriend members of
rival gold mafia gangs. NewsHawks
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