Corruption in Zimbabwe

Report from the Helen Suzman foundation:

You cannot appreciate why Mugabe and his henchmen are clinging so tenaciously to power until you know how much they have to lose

ALTHOUGH CORRUPTION within the Zimbabwean government is notorious, journalists have persistently failed to find proof of corruption in the case of President Robert Mugabe himself. The only time that anything really juicy emerged was during the US Senate hearings into the collapse of the Abu Dhabi-based Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in 1992. According to the published testimony of BCCI officials the bank had secured preferential banking rights in Zimbabwe by bribing Mugabe and Vice-President Joshua Nkomo in 1980-81....



To understand how politics and money work in Zimbabwe one has to begin with the fact that Zanu-PF is more than just a political party. It owns two companies, the M & S Syndicate, set up even before independence in 1980, and Zidco Holdings (of which M & S holds 55 per cent of the shares), set up straight afterwards.

Through these two companies the party has a vast range of interests, (see Figure 1) including Treger Holdings, producers of building materials, hardware etc; Ottawa, a property management company; Catercraft, which runs the catering at Harare airport and also supplies all domestic and international flights out of Harare; and Zidlee Enterprises, which controls the duty free shops at Beit Bridge, Harare City and Harare Airport, also supplying diplomats with a range of goods. Zidlee is believed to be particularly useful to Zanu-PF high-ups who want to move foreign exchange in or out of the country.,,,


Mnangagwa has also played a key role in the expansion of Zanu-PF's financial interests into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In May 1999 he admitted that he had introduced a Chinese arms company, two transport companies, a banking group and a power company to Laurent Kabila and that they had all established businesses there. One of Zidco's subsidiaries, the First Bank Corporation, then set up in Kinshasa. In addition two other business associates of Mnangagwa went into business ferrying arms and supplies between Zimbabwe and the DRC, Billy Rautenbach's Wheels of Africa company and the head of the Zimbabwean army, General Vitalis Zvinavashe, with his company, Zvinavashe Transport. Mnangagwa then helped to broker an arms deal for Kabila of 21,000 AK-47s and US$53 million of heavy arms, all from China. Mnangagwa also works closely with John Bredenkamp, who boasts of being the biggest single supplier of arms to the Congo....

Zimbabwe's involvement in the DRC goes back much further than the current war. When Zimbabwean troops were pulled out of Mozambique in 1988, South African businessmen - to Harare's fury - were quick to scoop up the most lucrative deals there in the wake of the civil war. Mugabe vowed this would not happen twice. In 1996 Mugabe gave Kabila US$5 million to finance his rebellion against Mobutu. Just before Kinshasa fell to Kabila, Zimbabwe Defence Industries (owned by the government) concluded a US$53m deal to supply Kabila with everything from food to uniforms and mortar bombs. ZDI was then used to spearhead Zimbabwe's economic penetration of the DRC. The company is extremely secretive but in 1993, the last year when it gave out such information, its directors included Zvinavashe and another Mugabe intimate, Perence Shiri, the former head of the terrifying 5 Brigade.

Gradually the efforts of Shiri, Zvinavashe and Mnangagwa have led to the network of interests seen in the Figure showing Zimbabwe's military interests in the DRC. Zvinavashe and his brother are also directors of Osleg (Operation Sovereign legitimacy) which, following the Chinese model, is seen as the economic wing of the Zimbabwean armed forces. Osleg wanted, above all, to get its hands on the mining concessions that Kabila had promised. The first such venture was with Comiex-Congo, producing a new joint company, Cosleg. There followed a joint venture with the Omani-owned Oryx Natural Resources to form Oryx-Zimcon. In January 2000 Oryx Natural Resources bought Petra diamonds and rechristened it Oryx Diamonds - in which Zidco holds 237,000 shares....

Lots more at the link...
In the US, this type of report is called "MEGO"...my eyes glaze over, because of all the tiny details and confusion in the reader trying to figure out what is going on...
Which is how politicians get away with looting countries of their wealth while locals starve or live on overseas charity.
Of course, here in the Philippines we could teach them how to steal:
here the take is 20 percent of contracts...