Information from the Suisse Secrets leakage have actually shed brand-new light on Credit Suisse’s role in a controversial platinum mine sale that helped fund a wave of violence around Zimbabwe’s 2008 election.

Research on the story was provided by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project ID, while data know-how was provided by OCCRP’s Data Team. It was fact-checked by the OCCRP Fact-Checking Desk.

In 2008, Zimbabwe was at a turning point. President Robert Mugabe faced electoral defeat by pro-democracy challengers for the first time in twenty years. All of a sudden, his cash-starved regime received a surprise $100 million, which it presumably funnelled into a violent campaign that implemented the status quo, and kept Zimbabwe on the road to a financial disaster from which it is yet to recuperate.

Now, dripped data from Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse has actually shed brand-new light on the function the bank played in the deal that saved Mugabe from prospective defeat and obstructed a chance for financial and political reform.

The $100 million originated from the sale of platinum mining rights that Mugabe’s government had rapidly appropriated, then provided to a business owned by Muller Conrad “Billy” Rautenbach, a long time good friend of the program. Mugabe’s routine utilized the proceeds of the offer to spend for the president’s campaign of violence, according to multiple reports.

Rautenbach and Credit Suisse understood each other well. They both owned a big share of the exact same business: Central African Mining and Exploration Company (CAMEC). By mid-2007 the bank owned six percent of CAMEC through its London-based financial investment subsidiary, Credit Suisse Securities Ltd.

. Credit Suisse promoted Rautenbach as a crucial possession in the region. Its mining experts promoted CAMEC in journalism and in instruction notes, telling investors the company was a “new major in the making,” and a possible competitor to mining behemoth Xstrata.

Credit Suisse likewise provided CAMEC, which was noted on London’s Alternative Investment Market index, a $60 million credit line, which the business completely utilized.

On March 4, 2008, a chain of events started that would quickly get the Mugabe administration the money it required for its re-election campaign while also making Rautenbach a sizable earnings. It began when Rautenbach opened two accounts with Credit Suisse, according to leaked bank records that become part of the Suisse Secrets examination, collaborated by OCCRP and based upon a huge chest of banking information leaked to Süddeutsche Zeitung.

2 weeks later on, the Zimbabwean government strong-armed mining business Anglo American into handing over a tranche of land that included the rights for mining platinum there. The federal government right away transferred those rights to Rautenbach’s overseas business and a state mining company.

CAMEC announced a couple of days later, on March 28, that it would release 200 million shares of its stock worth about 100 million British pounds ($1.99 million). Among the purchasers that helped fund the questionable offer was reportedly Credit Suisse, which bought an unknown variety of shares. The majority of shares was purchased by Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, a U.S.-based hedge fund (now called Sculptor Capital Management).

2 weeks later on, on April 11, 2008, CAMEC purchased out Rautenbach’s company for $5 million and 215 million CAMEC shares. CAMEC supplied its new company with $100 million to enable it “to adhere to its contractual obligations” to Mugabe’s government, according to CAMEC’s stock market filings. The money does not appear to have been utilized for meeting any responsibility, or doing any mining. Rather, the company was extensively reported to have actually transferred the funds to Mugabe’s ZANU-PF political party.

With a flurry of activity, the entire procedure was completed in less than three weeks. CAMEC had its mining rights, the Mugabe program had $100 million, and Rautenbach had actually stolen a considerable amount.

The $100 million arrived within weeks of Mugabe losing the preliminary of elections to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. With a run-off vote looming, and money in the bank to pay punks and supporters, the ZANU-PF set to work delivering on a risk to penalize anyone who betrayed them at the tally box.

Within days of the money arriving, a three-month project of terror had begun.

Soldiers and armed gangs unleashed Operation Makavhoterapapi? (‘Where did you put your vote?’), in which more than 100 individuals were eliminated and over 1,000 assaulted. Opposition leader Tsvangirai was forced to flee the country just 4 days after the $100 million arrived with the routine. With the opposition decimated by violence, Mugabe went uncontested into the next round.

“That money totally produced all the heartache, discomfort, gerrymandering, violence, intimidation, repression that took place at the 2008 election,” stated Roy Bennett, a previous anti-Mugabe political leader, on a Zimbabwean radio program in 2012.” [The election violence] is directly connected to that $100 million.”

3 days after the platinum offer closed, and as Zimbabwe came down into violence, a Credit Suisse research paper lauded CAMEC as one of its “African 20” stock picks.

There is no evidence that Credit Suisse understood about the prepared corruption but it ought to have seen that the deal was suspicious. A classified U.S. State Department cable, sent out May 23, 2008, and later launched by Wikileaks, explained the sale as a “promptly concluded and dirty deal.”

After Sani Abacha passed away in 1998, it was discovered that Credit Suisse had helped stash a few of the billions of dollars the dictator’s family had actually robbed from his country.

The Swiss Federal Banking Commission found that Credit Suisse ignored anti-money laundering rules when accepting $214 million in deposits from 2 children of the late Nigerian totalitarian Sani Abacha.

2 years later, the Swiss Banking Association fined Credit Suisse 750,000 Swiss francs ($505,100) over its handling of Abacha household funds however the bank dealt with no criminal charges

Following the scandal, Credit Suisse promised to accept in future “only those customers whose source of wealth and funds can be fairly developed to be genuine”.

To defuse the fallout from that discovery, the bank’s then-chairman stated in 2000 that it had actually “continuously improved … control treatments and compliance with them.”

Later on that year, Credit Suisse ended up being a founding member of the Wolfsberg Group, a worldwide banking association assembled to curb illegal financial circulations.

“The bank will endeavour to accept only those clients whose source of wealth and funds can be reasonably established to be genuine,” checked out a Wolfsberg Group mission statement in 2000.

Credit Suisse’s pledges to clean up did little to prevent its entanglement in criminal cases for numerous years to come.

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Source: SaharaReporters

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