Ministers abuse Mugabe

President Robert Mugabe has unknowingly been introduced to international fraudsters, who come as investors, by some of his top ministers and close associates, Daily News reported.

This has posed serious questions on the type of advice Mugabe gets as some of the shadowy people the 89-year-old leader is made to meet, and even approve business deals for, have turned out to be of questionable backgrounds.

Some of the business or eminent people that Mugabe has been introduced to are fugitives from justice in their home countries or have been classified as suspicious by international institutions.

This comes in the wake of a Daily News story exposing claims by Omani businessman Kamal Khalfan that he is politically-connected and could assist in clinching multi-million dollar deals with the Harare establishment through his political connections.

Foreign businessmen who are well-connected to Cabinet ministers and the country's security structures are styling themselves as middlemen in multimillion-dollar deals.

Khalfan's e-mail exchanges with a German businessman bring to the fore the widely held belief that ministers and other top government officials are being used to siphon bilions of dollars worth of resources from Zimbabwe.

Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, at one point told Mugabe that Zimbabwe's ministers were demanding kickbacks in order to facilitate business deals.

The government officials work with middlemen who collect bribes on behalf of billionaires from across the globe, who then benefit from underhand business deals directly with the establishment.

On Monday, Khalfan confirmed to the Daily News, that he is aware of a Bulgarian national and business consultant Stamen Stanchev, who was recently convicted by a Romanian court for economic espionage.

Khalfan, who is the patron of the Zimbabwe National Army Charity, owner of Catercraft and also a self-confessed sponsor of the ruling party Zanu PF, reportedly introduced the convicted Stanchev to Mugabe.

According to the Romanian press, the Bulgarian was last year sentenced to 11 years in prison for economic espionage.

He also received another four years and 10 months for the creation and support of a criminal group.

According to the Romanian Court, Stanchev consulted in the privatisation of Romanian State enterprises for his own advantage.

When contacted again yesterday, Khalfan could neither deny nor confirm that Stanchev had met Mugabe.

He said: "That is the kind of thing I don't want to talk about because you twist it."

But he confirmed the Bulgarian had been to Zimbabwe trying to promote trade relations between the two countries.

However, Khalfan pales in comparison to top government officials who have introduced controversial businessmen to Mugabe, taking advantage of the messy economic situation prevailing in the country.

Two Ghanaian businessmen at the centre of a $6 million diamond bribery storm were introduced to Mugabe by a Cabinet minister in 2011 at State House.

One of them, Kingsley Ghansah, who was convicted and sentenced to  five years in prison by Harare magistrate Don Ndirowei in 2012 for illegally trading in gold, surreptitiously left the country while on bail pending appeal.

He is now a fugitive from justice.

He was introduced as a new investor in the diamonds sector together with his boss William Atto Essien.

In September 2010, Mugabe was conferred with an honorary degree by a bogus Ecuadorian university led by Reverend Walter Roberto Crespo.

The Zanu PF leader was meant to pass through Ecuador to receive the doctorate on his way home from the UN General Assembly in New York in October the same year but things changed dramatically after details of Crespo's murky past began to leak in the media. Crespo had visited Zimbabwe and met Mugabe at State House.

In 2001, the Bishop was arrested and jailed for three years for supplying arms to the guerrilla movement, Revolutionary Forces of Columbia. He was also implicated in the sale of anti-tank missiles and cluster bombs to the rebels for use in killing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Doubts were also raised on Crespo's church and university with even the Anglican Diocese in Zimbabwe distancing itself from his church.

Controversial Chinese magnate, Sam Pa, who uses a string of pseudonyms, reportedly enjoys cosy relations with Mugabe's government.

One company Sino Zim, which has links to Pa, in 2009 came out tops in five bids lodged for diamond concessions which Zanu PF classified as "special national interest projects."

The Chinese Foreign ministry has put out several statements distancing itself from some of Pa's business dealings.

In Zimbabwe at the time, the Chinese ambassador Xin Shunkang, also warned the government to be cautious, saying his government had no connection with China Sonangol and by implication, Pa.

In 2009, a US congressional commission published a scathing report about the 88 Queensway Group, a company with links to Pa.

It said its lack of transparency and public accountability was a "major concern" for the United States as it acquired assets globally by stealth. It implied strongly that China International Fund (CIF) could be falsely representing itself as a private business when it was actually an arm of the intelligence and public security service out to increase China's influence and guarantee the supply of oil and raw materials from Africa to fuel its runaway economy.

Over the years, Zimbabwe has lost billions of dollars in sleazy deals, especially involving gold and diamonds, and top government ministers are believed to be behind the illicit activities bleeding the country.