Scandal

One of South Africa’s biggest money launderers was behind three companies that played a key role in the country’s state capture by the controversial Gupta brothers under former President Jacob Zuma, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has found.

The net is closing on one of South Africa’s most notorious money launderers. In the final episode, the Gold Mafia boss issues a threat to anyway who breaks the oath of omertà. “What do you think is going to happen?” “They kill you, don't they?” “Exactly,” he replies. A member of the same gang is now in hiding and speaks to the I-Unit from a safe house. “They will come after me, that's a given. If I stay [in South Africa], I will be dead by the time this [film] hits the first five minutes of play.”

Kamlesh Pattni and Ewan Macmillan, who run two major rival gold-smuggling gangs out of Zimbabwe, both made clear to Al Jazeera reporters that they – and others in their field – had one preferred destination for the gold their couriers carry out of the Southern African nation: Dubai. Pattni and Alistair Mathias, Macmillan’s business partner, independently advised Al Jazeera reporters to set up front companies in Dubai. Once the gold from Zimbabwe arrives in the Emirati city, they said, it is melted in refineries there and rebranded as Dubai gold. Dubai is the UAE’s gold hub.

The Government of Zimbabwe has been slammed for 'conveniently' leaving out the 'bigwigs' like Ewan Macmillan, Simon Rudland, Kamlesh Pattni, Uebert Angel and Henrietta Rushwaya exposed in the "gold mafia" documentary by Al Jazeera while freezing assets of the "small fish" who admitted facilitating smuggling of the precious mineral.

“We do merchanting, that’s it.”  This is how Mohamed Khan, one of South Africa’s biggest money launderers, described his approach to hiding vast amounts of illicit cash from authorities. That code word for laundering sits well with the man known better by his street name, Mo Dollars. Over the last decade, Khan has built a legend as a go-to figure for people wanting to clean their dirty money in Southern Africa.

The second episode of Al Jazeera’s four-part investigative documentary has laid bare the porous Robert Mugabe International Airport and how security is intentionally compromised to facilitate the smuggling of valuable minerals and cash. Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe head of security Cleopas Chidodo reveals in detail how criminal gangs can smuggle minerals and money through the airport, without repercussion – thanks to his facilitation.

Opposition parties in Zimbabwe are demanding a forensic investigation into the findings of the 'gold mafia' exposé by Al Jazeera. This follows an Al Jazeera documentary which implicated high ranking Zanu PF officials as part of a clique notoriously known as the “Gold Mafia” facilitating the smuggling of gold worth millions of dollars.

Several key officials at three major South African banks are helping a gold smuggling gang launder millions of dollars of dirty cash in exchange for regular bribes, an Al Jazeera investigation has found.

They operate from the shadows. Al Jazeera’s latest investigation, The Gold Mafia, brings their crimes out into the open. Last week, Part 1 of ‘Who are the Gold Mafia?‘ dove into the lives of some of Southern Africa’s biggest money launderers and smugglers, from pastors to diplomats. Now, in Part 2, meet one of the region’s biggest cigarette moguls, a showoff money launderer and their crafty partners who are plundering their nations of money and gold using a web of highly-placed connections, front companies and carefully doctored documents.

Zimbabwe’s government is using smuggling gangs to sell gold worth hundreds of millions of dollars, skirting some of the consequences of tough Western sanctions imposed on the country over human rights abuses, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) can reveal. The smuggling feeds into an enormous money-laundering operation, all facilitated by Fidelity Gold Refinery, a subsidiary of Zimbabwe’s central bank, and enabled, in some cases, directly by senior government officials and relatives of the country’s president, Emmerson Mnangagwa.