HARARE – Government faces fresh dilemma on how to handle the gold smuggling and money laundering scandal exposed in a corruption busting Al Jazeera documentary after the central bank has also been fingered in the embarrassing crimes.
Following the revelations contained in the documentary titled, Gold Mafia, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has frozen the assets of four individuals who are implicated in the scandal.
They are United Kingdom based preacher Uebert Angel, Ewan Macmillan, Simon Rutland, and Kamlesh Pattni.
The culprits nailed themselves when they were filmed by undercover Al Jazeera journalists boasting about their links to Zimbabwe’s ruling elite and their crafty abilities to move loads of gold and hard cash over borders without being detected.
The freezing of assets coincided with a government order for the name-dropping individuals to be investigated for the crimes.
Observers believe the RBZ’s move to freeze the culprits’ assets was an attempt to hoodwink the public into the false belief the Zanu PF led authority was acting on the shock scandal.
However, in a bizarre irony to the saga, the central bank’s name has featured in the third instalment of the four-part documentary, putting authorities at a loss on how to react.
The episode which aired on Thursday, names RBZ for providing gold export certificates to legitimise multi-million dollar gold and money laundering transactions.
The investigative documentary revealed that the smuggled gold was being refined in Dubai to make it look new, despite the fact that gold refinement is also the mandate of Fidelity Printers, a central bank subsidiary.
