HARARE - One gold smuggler described Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa as his business partner. Another talked of Mnangagwa as a former partner whom he still meets, according to Aljazeera.
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.
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.
