USA & Britain tell of Mugabe"s Elite Mafia

Original Post Date: 2002-10-06  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 10/6/2002 11:48:39 PM
USA & Britain tell of Mugabe"s Elite Mafia

[I have often said that the new Marxist rulers of Africa are best described as: liars, thieves and murderers. No doubt many thought this was an exaggeration or an outright lie. Now you can see how many other Western government officials are coming to this conclusion all by themselves. Jan]

This light-shedding story appeared in the Spanish national newspaper, El
Pais, last Sunday. It is a brilliant illustration of why the Zimbabwean
government will go to any length to hang on to power.

Hitler, the Arab Playboy and the Son of God
By John Carlin

In order to transport half a million dollars in unlaundered cash
safely from one country to another there are two basic requirements.
First, you must possess a business class ticket, because the weight of
half a million dollars exceeds the the hand luggage limit on Economy.
Second, you must disembark at an airport where customs officials may be
relied upon not to ask questions.
Harare International Airport has provided precisely such
facilities
in recent years; foreign associates of the Zimbabwean government have
provided the business class tickets and the millions in cash. Once inside
Zimbabwe, the money has been employed, among other things, to pay off
senior government officials and others close to President Robert Mugabe;
to engage in currency exchange rackets; and, abetted by the military and
other elements in the Zimbabwean state apparatus, to purchase “blood
diamonds” in the war zones of the Congo.
In tracking the trail of the cash, el Pais has obtained dozens of
documents, including three signed affidavits, and spoken to experts on
Zimbabwe in London, Washington and New York. But the investigation has
centred chiefly on the testimony of two individuals who worked closely for
more than two years within an elite clique of Zimbabweans and foreign
business people who have been making big money out of the mayhem of war.
The two individuals’ story reveals the corrupt schemings of Robert
Mugabe’s inner circle and reinforces the perception — held by the
European Union and the United States, among others – that Mugabe is the
leader not so much of a national government as of a small gang that has
spent the last four years getting rich thanks to a war that has cost more
than two million lives in the Congo; that deems its own survival to be of
more pressing urgency than the impending death by famine, as the United
Nations has warned, of six million Zimbabweans.
In conversations el Pae(173)­s held in Washington that ranged from
Congress to the State Department to the Pentagon and in London with
officials of the government and members of the House of Lords, the words
that kept on recurring to describe Zimbabwe’s ruling elite were “mafia”,
“pillage” and “criminal”. The consensus, summed up by one congressional
staffer in Washington, was that the Zimbabwean government was “a criminal
organisation run for the benefit of Mugabe and his cronies”.
“Mugabe always was power-hungry, but not – I thought – corrupt. I
never imagined he would end up presiding over the most corrupt regime in
Africa,” said Robin Renwick, one of the chief architects of the Lancaster
House agreement which gave independence to Zimbabwe and, as it turned out,
uninterrupted power to Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party for the last 22 years.
Lord Renwick, later British ambassador in South Africa and Washington, has
been one of the more vocal proponents of an EU visa ban and assets freeze
imposed this year on Mugabe and 71 of his associates.
Russ Feingold, the Democrat who chairs the US Senate’s
Sub-Committee
on Africa, has pushed for similar sanctions in Washington.
Senator Feingold, who has met with members of Mugabe’s inner circle, said
that Zimbabwe’s “elites” had “strong incentives to retain power regardless
of the cost to the country as a whole”; that it was dificult to avoid the
conclusion “that public office is being used almost solely for private
gain”. Or, as Renwick more bluntly put it, “the Zimbawean army has been
rented out in the Congo for the benefit of Mugabe and the mafia around
him”.
Ed Royce, the Republican who heads the House of Representatives’
Africa sub-committee, is outraged by what he calls Mugabe’s use of “food
as a weapon”, deliberately “starving people” – his political opponents.
The judiciary is neutered, the press is gagged (North Korea-style, no
foreign press are allowed in Zimbabwe today) and meanwhile, Royce said,
“Mugabe’s cronies live high by pillaging the Democratic Republic of
Congo”.
Walter Kansteiner, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa,
spoke of the man-made “tragedy” of Zimbabwe when he spoke to el Pae(173)­s.
Traditionally an exporter of food, a country with a solid infrastructure
and one of the highest educational standards in Africa, Zimbabwe had been
a beacon of light in a dark continent. It had emerged, in Kansteiner’s
word, “from a harsh colonial past into a country that clearly valued
democratic tradition”. Not any more, said Kansteiner, who – choosing his
words diplomatically – described the business deals the Mugabe regime now
engaged in as a “a little bit murky”.
The revelations of the two individuals from inside the Zimbabwean
“mafia” who spoke to el Pais, in conversations held in London and
Marbella, help reveal the depths of the Zimbabean tragedy and shed new
light on the murk; on a state-sanctioned criminal network whose
accomplices and interests extend from Africa to Europe and the Middle
East. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because they said they
feared that if their names were published they, or their wives and
children, might be killed. Because of their very real concerns, the two
sources shall be known in this article as – choosing two names entirely at
random – Ali and Moses.

The story they tell has two protagonists, Emmerson Mnangagwa and
Thamer Said Ahmed Al Shanfari, both of whom have been in the spotlight of
a long-standing United Nations investigation into the looting of the
Congo’s mineral wealth. Mnangagwa is Mugabe’s crony in chief: his closest
confidant, the key man in Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organisation –
the secret police — ever since independence, and the man with whose
blessing almost any crime may be committed in Zimbabwe with impunity. Al
Shanfari, Mnangagawa’s crony, is an Omani entrepreneur described in a
secret South African intelligence document obtained by el Pae(173)­s as “the
Zimbabweans’ most important foreign business partner”. Mnangagwa, known in
Zimbabwe as “the Son of God” because of the general supposition that he is
Mugabe’s anointed successor, is the man who, among other things,
guarantees the safe passage of illegal cash and diamonds through Harare
Airport. Shanfari, the playboy son of a former Omani oil minister, is the
man who starts the ball rolling by buying the business class tickets and
arranging the transfer of the large sums of cash from Europe on which the
commercial transactions in the Congo depend. Shanfari is the president and
chief executive officer of a company called Oryx Natural Resources that
owns a diamond concession in Mbuji-Mayi, in the Congo, jointly with the
governments of Zimbabwe and the Congo.
Ali, more hands-on in his dealings with Mnangagwa and Shanfari
than
Moses, recalls how three different individuals paid by Shanfari would take
it in turns to pick up sums ranging from 500,000 to 750,000 US dollars in
cash from a bank account in London and a bank account in Brussels, both in
the Oryx company name. The money itself did not belong to Oryx (a company
whose auditors are the same as Enron’s, Arthur Andersen) but to at least
three Arab business associates of Shanfari’s. One of them was a Lebanese
diamond dealer; one an Iraqi arms dealer; one a Sudanese businessman who
had been involved in the bankruptcy scandal of the Abu Dhabi-based Bank of
Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in 1992. Ali and Moses said they
knew personally, from first-hand evidence, of ten such trips, involving a
total of around five million dollars. “But we know there were many more of
these missions, even though we were not directly involved,” they said.
Shanfari’s couriers, ex-soldiers who could be relied upon to obey
and follow orders, would catch a plane at Gatwick Airport (“there was no
problem with the x-ray machine: money just shows up as ordinary paper”),
take their business class seats and fly south to Harare, where – thanks to
Mnangagwa and the complicity of the Zimbabwean military — they would
breeze through customs. “The money would then be distributed in various
ways,” said Ali, who says he saw much of what happened with his own eyes.
“Part of it would go to the PLO Embassy in Harare. The ambassador was a
very nice man. As well as being the longest-serving diplomat in Harare –
his car’s number plate was CD1 – he was a foreign exchange dealer. He gave
us Zimbabwean dollars in return for the US, lots of them, in big cardboard
boxes.” Large chunks of this money would then go to Emmerson Mnangagwa.
“Emmerson would get a cut after every trip. What would happen would be
that Emmerson would come round to Thamer’s house for a barbecue or a
dinner – he has a huge ranch house outside Harare — and while they were
eating one of Thamer’s trusted people would put two or three of these
cardboard boxes stuffed with money into the boot of Emmerson’s car.”
Another of the beneficiaries of Shanfari’s largesse was Mugabe’s
young wife, Grace, a woman who has acquired a reputation as something of
an African Imelda Marcos on account of her profligate spending down the
years in the shops of London, New York, Madrid and other western capitals
which she has visited in recent years – usually flying Air Zimbabwe, a
state airline which the Mugabes have a habit of comandeering for their own
private use. Ali and Moses said they were aware of boxes of money having
been delivered by car to the First Lady at her home. A third beneficiary
was General Vitalis Zvinavashe, head of the Zimbabwean armed forces,
famous for having uttered the following memorable line last March on the
eve of Zimbabwe’s flagrantly stolen elections, “Any change designed to
reverse the gains of this revolution will not be supported.”
Another individual who received cash hand-outs from Shanfari was
Sydney Sekeramayi, Mnangagwa’s most serious rival to take over as
president eventually from Mugabe. Sekeremayi, today minister of mines and
energy, wrote a letter to Shanfari dated 7 July 2000 when he was Minister
of State Security in the President’s Office – meaning head of intelligence
— thanking him for monies received. Elections had just taken place in
Zimbabwe and Sekeramayi had retained his parliamentary seat. The letter, a
copy of which has been obtained by el Pae(173)­s, carries an official Zimbabwean
government letter head and contains Sekeremayi’s signature at the bottom.
It reads:
“Dear Mr Thamer Al-Shanfari,
I am writing this letter to express my sincere appreciation for
the
generous moral, material and financial assistance you rendered to boost my
election campaign. My re-election as the Member of Parliament for
Marondera East was greatly facilitated by your support.
Thank you very much.
Dr S:T: Sekeremayi.”

The crucial cogs in the state apparatus having been duly oiled
(Moses calculates that Mugabe’s people took between 10 and 20 per cent of
the cash that arrived on the flights from London Gatwick), the remaining
money set off into Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. On planes provided by a company called Avient — of which the
ZANU-PF treasurer and close Mugabe associate J.C. Joshi is a director –
that also had a side-line supplying Antonov aircraft and Ukrainian pilots
to the Congo military. Mnangagwa, who did business deals with his Congo
counterparts, saw to it that there would be no awkward questions asked by
the customs men at Kinshasa airport.
“The procedure was quite straightfoward,” Moses explained. “We’d
meet with a guy called Alphonse in Kinshasa, a Belgian diamond dealer, and
we gave him US dollars for uncut stones that had been extracted in the
Congo’s big diamond area Mbuji-Mayi. Then we’d go back to Harare with the
diamonds and from there we’d take them down to South Africa to have them
cut. That was the tricky part.”
A couple of individuals who Ali and Moses know very well and who
were employed by Shanfari transported the diamonds to Johannesburg in
their underpants. “Enough diamonds to fill a tea cup,” said Moses. “Easily
half a million to a million US worth on each trip.” Once the stones had
made it through Johannesburg airport the rest was easy. “We got the
diamonds back into Harare – never a problem because we had the
infrastructure of the military to assist us and of course carte blanche in
the airport itself. From there the diamonds, certified as if they hade
been extracted legally from a mine owned by Oryx, travelled on to Antwerp
where they were sold legally. The people who put the money into the system
in the first place got the same amount back – but now certified by the
Antwerp diamond buyer as having clean provenance. It was pure
money-laundering. Everybody was happy. Thamer’s Arab friends had achieved
their objectives. Thamer took a big cut. Emmerson and the others made easy
money.”
Sometimes, though, Shanfari tried to get a little too clever,
according to Ali and Moses. “It worked beautifully, until the day that it
didn’t.” This is what would happen. The US dollars would travel from
Harare to Kinshasa but not, initially, to buy diamonds. To be changed,
rather, into Congolese Francs. At the office of an associate of Shanfari’s
called Akram that Ali describes as having been “just full of foreign
currencies”. Akram was Akram Moorad, nephew of the lebanese diamond dealer
who was among Shanfaris cash suppliers in Europe.
“Thamer called the Congolese Francs ‘chicken feed’,” recalled Ali.
“There was tons of the stuff, loaded inside big silver containers, that
we’d take back to Harare. Later, in the dead of night, we’d load the boxes
onto a Lybian plane – a private plane in from Tripoli — at Harare airport
which would take the money to Kisangani, which was the heart of rebel
country in the Congo war. Here they desperately needed Congolese Francs.”
Congolese Francs are the local currency but cash has been hard to obtain.
The distance between between the capital Kinsahasa and Kisangani is more
than 700 miles. In war-time getting from one place to the other has proved
almost impossible. Getting US dollars presented less ofa challenge,
because they could be shipped across Congo’s borders with two countries
friendly to the Kisangani rebels, Uganda and Rwanda. “So they bought
Thamer’s Congolese Francs in US dollars,”Ali continued, “but Thamer got
back double the rate he’d sold them at in Kinshasa. Double!”
It was a great business, (though there are suggestions now that
some
of the dollars received might have been forged). But it was risky.
“Because if either the Zimbabweans or the Congolese found out the money
was going to those they were actually at war with, there would be hell to
pay for Thamer.” As far as the Zimbabwe authorities were concerned, Moses
explained, the Lybian plane was taking the money to Oryx’s mine at
Mbuji-Mayi, to pay for staff and equipment.
“One day we got nailed at Kinshasa airport,” Ali said. “There was
a
cock-up, someone wasn’t tipped off on time, and they caught us – Congolese
military security –with 750,000 US worth of Congolese Francs on our way
back to Harare.” An employee of Shanfari’s was jailed, as was Patel the
Kenya Airways man. Shanfari’s employee was released after Mnangagwa
intervened directly on his behalf with the Congolese justice minister.

END OF PART ONE
(Hope I can get my hands on part Two)

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