Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe says authorities will leave no stone unturned in a bid to bring to justice a gold smuggling syndicate that was involved in the recent siphoning of 23 pieces of gold to South Africa.
This follows the arrest of Tashinga Nyasha Masinire in South Africa on Sunday after he was found in possession of 23 pieces of gold allegedly smuggled from Zimbabwe.
Masinire was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport by South Africa’s anti-organised crime unit, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks), and is facing charges of contravening the Customs Act 91 of 1964 and Precious Metals Act 37 of 2005.
Kazembe stated that investigations conducted so far indicate that Masinire was not working alone and all the culprits involved in the heist will be accounted for. He said:
We are going to leave no stone unturned until we get to the bottom of it. We want to establish how that happened, how he managed to go through all the security points. We will be able to establish what transpired and investigations are ongoing.
We have already established that when he walked in he didn’t have a bag, so we are going to find out how he ended up having a bag.
To complete our investigations, we need information from Interpol, ZRP is already engaging Interpol for relevant information given that the culprit was arrested in South Africa.
We not going to leave no stone unturned to unearth what actually transpired.
The smuggled 23 gold pieces are worth US$783 000 or R11 million. Masinire has already appeared in a South African court and was granted bail.