Report: Mugabe’s Wife Wants A Diamond Polishing Plant
February 18, 09
Grace Mugabe, the wife of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, traveled to Hong Kong in January to make a multi-million-dollar investment in a diamond cutting and polishing plant in Qingdao, China, according to The Sunday Times.
According to the report, Mugabe arrived in Hong Kong at the end of a holiday trip to make two large investments: One is the polishing plant, the other is the purchase of residential property at Tai Po district in northern
A Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) report accused the Zimbabwe government of killing dozens of artisanal alluvial miners in order to clear them from the country’s diamond fields.
PAC also expressed a concern that the Zimbabwe authorities are holding a stockpile of 1.3 million carats of diamonds and that some of it may have been bartered for weapons.
President Mugabe has been accused in the past of being involved in the looting of his country’s diamond fields. ABC Television in Australia reported last July that Mugabe is smuggling diamonds out of Zimbabwe and into China, flying through Australian airspace.
According to RTTNews, a flight last year carried 15 tons of unidentified “palace cargo” to Beijing to be exchanged for weapons and luxury items.
The Sunday Times quotes sources in Zimbabwe that say the couple has hidden millions at a bank in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Mugabe and many of his associates are under a limited international travel ban, preventing them from entering the U.S. and the European Union. They can however travel freely in most of Asia.
One issue that remains unclear is what steps local authorities will take. The Sunday Times claims that new money-laundering laws in Hong Kong have created a special category of “politically exposed persons” for surveillance that could include the Mugabes.
However, Chinese authorities may allow their local property ownership. “Hong Kong is a free port, and even Falun Gong practitioners can buy a property there, am I right?” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman told South China Morning Post.