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Did Zimbabwe’s white farmers try to get back at Mugabe but taking over the country’s diamonds or they were just duped by a shady businessman?

Cranswick seemed to have closer links to Adonis than he admitted. Adonis was a major investor in ACR when it was registered as a public company in England and Wales on 5 April 2005. The company had an authorised shareholding of one billion shares at one penny each.

Before its listing on the Alternative Investment Market, it had issued 155 732 194 shares. The biggest investors were GLG European Long-Short Fund with 14 023 809 shares and GLG European Opportunity Fund with 8 359 142 shares. Adonis had two investments one for 9 605 214 shares and another for 5 994 306 shares.

GLG held 14.38 percent of the company prior to the listing and though the number of shares did not change, this was diluted to 11.84 percent after the listing. Adonis held 10.02 percent but this was diluted to 8.25 percent after the listing.

A note in the admission document, however, says that Adonis also held an additional 40 831 437 shares on behalf of 34 account holders. This represented 21.6 percent of the company’s stake after listing. Adding the shareholding Adonis already held overtly this meant that Adonis Investments controlled 29.84 percent of ACR after the listing and 36.25 percent before the listing.

Adonis’s investment into ACR was facilitated by Csaszar whom Cranswick said was also an investor. It is not clear whether the 34 account holders agreed to have their money invested in ACR or this was simply approved by Csaszar and Cranswick because it appears Cranswick had used investors’ funds before but he said this was by agreement with Csaszar.

He disclosed this is response to a question by ATO auditor Robert Dimitrovski who seemed shocked that Cranswick could make as much as 25 percent for introducing clients to Adonis.

“I have actually used some of the money once,” he said. “All right. By- by agreement with Tony. I used it- I used it intentionally for three or four days, but it actually turned out to be longer. I had some debts I needed to pay overseas, and so I actually paid a part of the amount owing to a resident here out of my own…account, because I had borrowed his money as it transferred through Adonis. But always with agreement of the person.”

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This post was last modified on March 16, 2016 6:26 pm

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Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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