Mugabe ally loses EU sanctions compensation case

82      The Council refers to documents identified in the response of the United Kingdom authorities to the request for access to documents submitted by the applicants on 19 February 2009 (see paragraph 57 above). Those documents include articles available on the internet providing accounts of the first applicant’s relationship with the Zimbabwean Government as intermediary in negotiations for land redistribution, as fuel supplier in 2002, but also as supplier of arms and as intermediary in connection with mining in the Congo, according to the report of 8 October 2002. Reference is also made to a document of the Nederlands instituut voor Zuidelijk Afrika (Netherlands Institute for Southern Africa, the Netherlands) that is available online and provides certain information from public sources on the first applicant’s career path, his relationship with the regime of Ian Smith, his circumvention of international sanctions imposed on that regime, his tobacco trading concession business and his relationship with the regime of President Mugabe involving the supply of arms and fuel, mediation in the redistribution of agricultural land and involvement in mining in the Congo. Those activities are also covered by reports dated May 2000 and October 2002 produced by the Council.

83      The Commission, for its part, refers to press articles covering the first applicant’s involvement in the struggle for power within the ZANU-PF party in 2006 as financial backer of certain members of the government who were potential successors to President Mugabe. Moreover, those articles relate to the first applicant’s close ties with that president but also refer to an investigation subsequently launched by the Zimbabwean authorities into the first applicant. According to those reports, the first applicant fled Zimbabwe as a result of that investigation, although his associates claimed that he was on a business trip.

84      In those circumstances, it is clear that the institutions concerned have presented a set of indicia sufficiently specific, precise and consistent to establish that there is a sufficient link between the first applicant and the regime against which the restrictive measures in question were directed. The circumstances described in the texts referred to in paragraphs 82 and 83 above give grounds for believing that, for long periods of time, the first applicant had links with the Zimbabwean regime such as to enable him to pursue a broad range of activities from which that regime profited as a direct result.

85      Thus, contrary to the applicants’ assertions, the report of 15 October 2003 does not invalidate either the findings of fact or the conclusions of the report of 8 October 2002. On the contrary, according to the latter report, a recommendation remained in place that the first applicant be subject to financial restrictions and a travel ban, as his activities were still to be monitored (see paragraphs 79 and 80 above). Moreover, even if the confidential tripartite agreement for the distribution of profits arising from the exploitation of deposits for which Gécamines held the concession in the Congo was not put into effect (see paragraph 78 above), the fact that he does not dispute that the agreement was signed or the terms of the agreement is at odds with the first applicant’s central claim that the Zimbabwean Government had no connection with that investment and the first applicant has failed to adduce any evidence to explain the nature of that government’s involvement, albeit in an agreement that was not put into effect.

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