Dark forces at play in missing Zimbabwe diamond cash probe

Former Central Intelligence Organisation director general Happyton Bonyongwe said the CIO held 50 percent shareholding at Kusena Mine in Chiadzwa, with the other 50 percent held by ZMDC.

“The context of participation of the President’s office into mining has to be understood in the context of the economic situation we were going through as a country. There were things that needed funding and Treasury could not fund us and the (CIO) found it necessary to undertake mining operations to raise funds,” Bonyongwe said.

Former ZMDC chairperson Goodwills Masimirembwa told the committee that the Zimbabwe Republic Police held 20 percent shareholding in Gye Nyame, which, on the orders of former Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, would finance their operations.

Other Gye Nyame shares were owned by Dantor’s Itai Munyeza and Blessmore Chanakira (6 percent) and Ghanaian businessman William Ato Essien’s Bill Minerals, which held 24 percent.

Munyeza said his firm had invested $5 million in the mine but the Ghanaian partners struggled to bring in investment before they were chased off the mine by the police in July 2013.

“Before that in April, two armed police officers came into my office and ordered me to hand over the keys to the diamond vaults. I refused because the plant was built using our funds, but they drove me to CVR building and I was detained for hours and forced to hand over the keys to the diamond vaults.

“I do not know what transpired later with the diamonds because we left and the police continued mining. We then wrote letters of what transpired to former President Robert Mugabe and Mpofu alerting them that we no longer had control and the police we mining on their own,” Munyeza said.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police deputy commissioner generals Innocent Matibiri and Josephine Shambare told the committee that they were unaware of police activities in the diamond fields.

“I must state that I know absolutely nothing about that entity Gye Name. The ZRP is an organisation of 50  000 people and assignments are deployed to each of us and so we know nothing,” Matibiri said.

“It appears to me that there are some mining operations that the police did not know about, for example that armed police officers stormed into Marange and came out with vaults, and the Gye Nyame operations,” added Shambare.

The Zimbabwe National Army, which held shares in Anjin, a diamond mining partnership between Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Company Ltd of China (AFECC) and Matt Bronze, an investment vehicle controlled by Zimbabwe’s military, did not appear before the committee.

Former mines minister Obert Mpofu also turned up but was turned away pending a ruling by the Speaker Jacob Mudenda on whether committee chairperson Temba Mliswa should recuse himself. – The Source

(265 VIEWS)