A former Zimbabwean finance minister and opposition leader has called for an international audit of the country’s diamond earnings for the past 10 years.
The Movement for Democratic Change Alliance deputy president Tendai Biti, who controlled the national purse during the government of national unity from 2009 to 2013, said diamonds had failed to benefit the ordinary peole in Zimbabwe.
“Future democratic government in Zimbabwe must review and audit all mining contracts and concessions dished out by this regime,” he tweeted Saturday while commenting on the resumption of mining by Anjin in Marange.
“Further there must be an international audit of Zimbabwe’s diamond earnings since 2010.The rape and pillage of Zimbabwe commodities must stop.”
Biti said despite the fact that Anjin was the country s biggest diamond producer, averaging a million carats a month, it hardly contributed ‘anything’ to the fiscus.
“Of the $15 billion worth of diamond revenue lost between 2010 and 2015, Anjin was biggest looter, much worse than Mbada Diamonds and DMC,” he claimed.
“Zimbabwe’s alluvial diamonds could have lasted 25 years but in under five years Anjin and others had stripped same and Zimbabwe has nothing to show for its diamonds.”
Anjin and several other companies were barred from Marange in 2016 by the then government of the late Robert Mugabe for allegedly failing to remit diamond revenue to the treasury.
This led to the establishment of the state-owned Zimbabwe Diamond Consolidated Company (ZCDC).
Anjin was, however, allowed to return to Marange last year by the new administration of president Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Mnangagwa was backed by the military to take over power from Mugabe in 2017.
Anjin was a joint venture between China’s Anhui Foreign Economic Construction Company (AFECC) and Matt Bronze, an investment vehicle controlled by Zimbabwe’s military.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished
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