HARARE – Controversial Zanu PF politician and businessman Pedzisai ‘Scott’ Sakupwanya has been named as one of the country’s biggest gold barons by ambassador-at-large Uebert Angel who features prominently in a corruption busting documentary by Qatar based news network Al Jazeera.
In a snippet of the fourth and final instalment of the ‘Gold Mafia’ investigative documentary, Angel boasts that Sakupawanya is a bigger gold dealer than Ewan MacMillan.
“MacMillan doesn’t control nothing. This (Sakupwanya) was his worker cleaning his car.
“He is the number one now in Zimbabwe,” says Angel.
MacMillan also features the documentary.
Angel also shows undercover journalists posing as criminals images of Sakupwanya flaunting his US$5 million cash and some gold bars on June 29, 2020.
“He’s right there, he’s in his house, sleeping on five million US dollars,” says the United Kingdom based preacher.
Sakupwanya, Zanu PF’s aspiring parliamentary candidate for Mabvuku, is also believed to be a front for some corrupt political elites.
In a report last year, privately owned Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG) fingered Sakupwanya as the mastermind of gold-related illicit financial flows that cost the country US$157 million per month and approximately US$1.9 billion per year.
Sakupwanya’s Better Brands Jewellery (BBJ) and other gold dealers operating in Mazowe and Penhalonga were accused of buying gold and delivering less than 50% to Fidelity Printers and Refiners while smuggling the rest to other countries.
