GRACE Mugabe has been fingered as one of the principal beneficiaries of illegal Marange diamond sales, which have been described as one of the dirtiest.
According to the latest cable releases by whistleblower website, Wikileaks, diamonds sales have enriched those close to President Robert Mugabe including his wife Grace, who is said to have reaped “tremendous profits”.
The cable detailed allegations that Gono was making thousands of dollars a month from diamond dealing, with money being funneled to Mugabe's wife and sister and to top members of the Zanu-PF party.
The cables, dated November 2008, reveal that the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) provided freshly printed notes for purchase of diamonds, which would then be sold for foreign currency, which was scarce at the time.
Sources are said to have told the United States ambassador to Zimbabwe that RBZ governor, Gideon Gono was running the sale of the diamonds making thousands of dollars every month.
The cables suggested that Gono kept the money printing press running to finance the purchase of diamonds and this could have accelerated hyperinflation, which eventually rendered the Zimbabwe dollar worthless.
“The diamonds that are sold to regime members and elites are sold for freshly printed Zimbabwean notes issued by the RBZ,” one document from late 2008 cited British mining executive Andrew Cranswick as saying.
The cables describe Zimbabwe’s diamond sales as one of the dirtiest, being run by a cartel of Mugabe’s close associates.
The Zimbabwean minerals are regularly referred to as “blood diamonds” as the illicit trade in the gemstones is reported to have led to the murder and displacement of thousands of people.
“In a country filled with corrupt schemes, the diamond business in Zimbabwe is one of the dirtiest,” according to a classified document from the US embassy in Harare.
A separate document from January 2009 said that as the local currency became essentially worthless, the Zimbabwe military stepped more deeply into the diamonds trade, using hard cash from abroad to finance operations.
“This (collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar) has not deterred the continued brisk diamond trade involving foreign buyers, including most prominently the Lebanese,” said a document from January 2009 citing a classified report from an unnamed US political officer.
In the classified documents prepared before the unity government came to power, US diplomats cite Cranswick as saying those close to Mugabe, including his wife, “have been extracting tremendous profits” from the Chiadzwa fields in the eastern part of the country.
Cranswick is embroiled in a legal wrangle with the government as he claims that his company, ACR was illegally pushed off mining the precious gem stone.
Rumours have been awash on Grace and Gono’s involvement in the diamond sales, but the latest cables could be the most revealing.
The government deployed soldiers at the diamond fields in Marange in 2008 to seal off the area and clamp down on illegal mining, but rights activists say this resulted in serious rights abuses by the army.
Villagers were uprooted and murders increased, the classified US documents said.
Another classified document cited a village chief as saying the government had relocated as many as 25 000 villagers in an attempt to secure more money.
Zimbabwe is now struggling to sell its Marange diamonds after the Kimberley Process barred its members from dealing in the stones, saying their certification by global regulators did not guarantee they were free from human rights abuses.
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