Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) leader Nelson Chamisa says Zimbabwe’s current leadership is corrupt and rotten to the core.
Chamisa made the remarks in response to Thursday’s latest Al Jazeera investigation “Gold Mafia”, which uncovered criminals driving gold smuggling and money laundering worth billions of dollars in Southern Africa. Chamisa tweeted:
The fish rots from the head #Aljazeeradocumentary exposes the extent of the rot at the top, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
This clearly shows how corrupt, rotten and broken leadership has destroyed a jewel and great country. Zimbabwe is not poor, it’s just poorly governed.
In a follow-up statement, CCC condemned the corruption, saying the provision of social services in the country has collapsed while millions are being looted. The opposition party said:
While our health, education and infrastructure systems are on their deathbed, the few elites who are connected to government officials are making at least US$80 million every month through one of our valuable natural resources, gold.
On Thursday, 23 March, Al Jazeera released Episode One of Gold Mafia (The Laundry Service) a four-part series.
Uebert Angel, a new-age pastor who was appointed a special envoy and ambassador-at-large to Europe and the Americas by President Emmerson Mnangagwa in 2021, his deputy Rikki Doolan, and Mnangagwa’s niece Henrietta Rushwaya, who is the president of the Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF), are named as part of the mafia.
In “The Laundry Service” episode, a former accountant of Kamlesh Pattni, a gold smuggler implicated in a scandal that robbed Kenya of 10 percent of its GDP in the 1990s, said his former boss is duping Zimbabwean government officials. Said the former accountant:
He (Pattni) exports jewellery and gold bars to Dubai and the rest of the world. In exchange, he has to bring foreign currency to Zimbabwe. On paper, he is bringing money to Zimbabwe.
The accountant said Pattni would declare a fraction of the value of Zimbabwean gold sold abroad and keep the rest of the proceeds out of the country.
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