Mliswa Portfolio Committee Should Leave Mugabe Alone, They Are Trying To Cleanse ED, Chiwenga: NPF (Full Text)

The opposition National Patriotic Front (NPF) has accused Temba Mliswa and the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Energy of leading a witch hunt against former president Robert Mugabe. The NPF alleges that Mliswa is being used in to create a sideshow and exonerate President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Vice President, General (retired) Constantino Chiwenga of looting diamonds from the Chiadzwa area. This follows the committee’s attempts to get Mugabe to appear before it so that he can answer questions relating to the figure of $15 billion which he said had been looted.

We publish the statement in full below

Harare-31 May 2018-The National Patriotic Front (NPF) wishes to register disquiet over the abuse of parliament and parliamentary procedures by
Honourable Temba Mliswa and his parliamentary portfolio committee on mines and energy.

Honourable Mliswa has been abusing his position as chairperson of the parliamentary portfolio committee to harass former President Robert Mugabe
through a fake process aimed at obfuscating debate around the abuse of diamonds and diamond revenue through illegal mining activities by
Zimbabwe’s security ministries, namely Home Affairs, Defence and State Security.

As a starting point, it is quite cynical for Hon Mliswa and the 8th Parliament of Zimbabwe to interrogate President Mugabe over anything when the same parliament participated in the ignoble November 15 2017 coup that unconstitutionally removed his incumbency.

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Hon Mliswa and his portfolio committee members, by participating in an attempted impeachment process against President Mugabe, which was an apparent artifice to legitimise the November 15 2017 coup, have no moral ground to conduct any genuine parliament business because their hands are
dirty and are as illegal as the regime and the President they are desperately
trying to cleanse.

The activities of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee and Hon Mliswa are clearly contrived and meant to exonerate President Emmerson Mnangagwa
and Vice President Constantino Chiwenga from allegations of looting diamonds by creating a sideshow involving the former president.

Despite public knowledge that the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, under its then commander, General Chiwenga, and then Minister of Defence, Mnangagwa, mined diamonds through a company called Anjin in partnership with some Chinese nationals, Mliswa’s committee has avoided questioning the duo’s role in the looting of the country’s diamonds.

It is inconceivable that such common knowledge is lost to the committee and its chairperson that they feel it is not necessary to question why the arm, under the direct command of the duo, mined diamonds in the first place.

Mliswa’s committee has been tepid on interrogating Mnangagwa and Chiwenga yet very fervent in its grandstanding and duplicitous attempts at dragging President Mugabe before it. While it is not our duty to give terms of reference to the portfolio committee, it is within our purview, as one of the biggest political parties in the country, to voice concerns over what is happening in our extractive sector.

We believe that the looting of diamonds in the country has its genesis in the corrupt manner in which the company to partner the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC), was chosen.

We believe that the Mliswa committee should interrogate why Minister Obert Mpofu, despite written communication in the “ZMDC Due Diligence Memorandum” went on to award the right to partner ZMDC to mine diamonds in Marange to an undeserving company against available information to the contrary.

Despite available information in the memorandum which pointed out that Reclam, the company that later partnered ZMDC to form Mbada and mine the Marange diamonds “is not a mining house and is currently not involved in diamond mining”, the minister went ahead to bless the partnership.

Even the fact that Reclam had “no diamond mining equipment”. and that the company had “no diamond mining as part of its vision and growth strategy”, did not dissuade the minister from blessing the joint venture and one wonders what sort of ‘gain’ the minister realised for awarding such an undeserving company a piece of this important national resource when the company was bringing in no expertise, equipment nor strategic vision to such an important national venture.

The Mliswa committee should investigate why Reclam sold its shares to Transfrontier resulting in a convoluted ownership structure in Mbada through multiple nominee shareholders which betray an intricate web of unscrupulous business dealings. The Effective Ownership Interests of Nominee Shareholders in Mbada, before its dissolution, included Lesley Chang 12.50%, Billy Li (6.25%), Express Agents (3.13%) and Leisure Star Limited (3.13%)

Lesley Chang and Billy Li are Hong Kong residents who own CLHL Secretaries, a company that provides services setting up anonymous, offshore shell companies mainly used in money laundering and other unscrupulous business dealings.

We therefore believe that Mliswa and his committee should get down to real business investigating how our diamonds were looted not playing games through sideshows meant for expediency and outright political skulduggery.

In fact, Mliswa is not fit to chair the committee after allegations that he connived with a businessman he is now attacking through parliament, to dupe the government of Zimbabwe into selling Bokai mine for $100million then went on to sell the same company for $1billion within a month of their purchase.

It is the duty of every Zimbabwean to front the fight against corruption but we can’t afford to let the’narrative determined by unscrupulous individuals whose Past is littered with questionable deals.

Together we can fight for what is good.