One gold smuggler described Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa as his business partner. Another talked of Mnangagwa as a former partner whom he still meets. A third said he had to keep the president in the loop about gold smuggling operations.
The president’s niece outlined an elaborate money laundering and gold smuggling scheme that she promised to help execute. And one of Zimbabwe’s top diplomats, handpicked by Mnangagwa, dialled the president’s wife to try to seal a laundering deal.
Gold Mafia, a four-part investigation by Al Jazeera, has revealed how some of Southern Africa’s biggest gold smuggling gangs plunder their countries to enrich themselves while helping criminals launder hundreds of millions of dollars. Undercover reporters from Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) posed as Chinese criminals to infiltrate these gangs, which offered them a range of options to wash dirty dollars using Zimbabwean gold.
But in case after case, spanning the gangs, one name kept cropping up as the person the smugglers claimed gave them a protective shield: President Emmerson Mnangagwa or “ED”, as he is known in Zimbabwe.
Mnangagwa became president of Zimbabwe in 2017, removing long-time leader Robert Mugabe. Now 80, Mnangagwa has promised to solve the country’s myriad socio-economic problems, including the widespread scourge of corruption.
Al Jazeera’s investigation, however, reveals multiple links between Mnangagwa and the gold smuggling and money laundering schemes bleeding the country. They raise questions over how much Mnangagwa knows about these scams, and whether – as some of the smugglers said – he was directly facilitating them.
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