By Stefaans Brummer, Craig McKune & Owen Gagare
Phil Edmonds, a former spin bowler for England, allegedly helped set up a $100 million loan for Mugabe's Zanu-PF that helped the party win the 2008 elections.
A New York hedge fund is said to have “loaned” the millions Zanu-PF needed to crush the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)’s victory in the 2008 elections. The source of a controversial $100-million loan that allegedly made it possible for President Robert Mugabe to steal the 2008 Zimbabwean election is a major US institutional investor. The payment, which critics say helped Mugabe’s Zanu-PF to buy votes and unleash a campaign of brutal repression in an election in which he faced almost certain defeat, was made possible by the New York-based Och-Ziff Capital Management Group.
Mugabe’s government was bankrupt and teetering as the rival MDC won the most votes in parliamentary and first-round presidential elections. Facing a trouncing in the runoff against the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe needed money fast. So his government sold the family silver – or rather platinum concessions freshly squeezed from South Africa’s Anglo American Platinum. The ultimate buyer was a mining company founded by former English cricketer Phil Edmonds. On top of the purchase price, the company threw in the $100-million (then R780-million) lifeline. That much is known. But Edmonds’s Central African Mining and Exploration Company (Camec), then listed in the United Kingdom, did not have that kind of cash. So it did what listed companies do – issue and sell new shares. Contrary to listing rules, the purchaser of the shares was not revealed, which meant that the ultimate source of the money remained a mystery. That source, it now turns out, was Och-Ziff.
Although it has about $30-billion in assets under management, Och-Ziff has kept a low profile. Closer to home, it is best known for its joint venture with Mvelaphanda Holdings, the private investment vehicle part owned by Human Settlements Minister and presidential hopeful Tokyo Sexwale. Although the partnership, then cast as “exclusive”, had been announced only months before, Mvelaphanda denies having participated in the Zimbabwe deal. The M&G is not aware of evidence to the contrary. It is surprising that Och-Ziff was willing to finance the Zimbabwean loan despite the likelihood that Mugabe, whom Western governments opposed implacably, would use it to fuel repression. Och-Ziff declined to comment.
Less than a week before Zimbabwe went to the first-round polls, its most tightly contested yet, Mugabe bagged a prize asset. Anglo American Platinum, the world’s top platinum producer, ceded more than a quarter of its platinum concessions in Zimbabwe to the government.
