Police intensify search for forex

ort, where youths in plain clothes thoroughly searched vehicles and their occupants, under the watchful eyes of police.
“I asked them what they looking for. They said they were looking for forex, gold, anything illegal,” a South African journalist Ronny Msimang visiting Zimbabwe said. “They searched the car, they searched my luggage. I showed them my wallet. I saw them doing body searches on other motorists.”
The Reserve Bank has also set up a unit to probe the flow of local banknotes to neighbouring countries which led to the knocking off of three zeros from the country’s battered currency four months ago.
The central bank has come under fire from government officials this year for failing to clamp down on a thriving black market for foreign currency where the Zimbabwe dollar is trading at up to 1,600:1 to the greenback compared to an official rate of 250. In addition to foreign currency, the black market has also seen a thriving trade in fuel, minerals and basic food commodities not readily available in the normal economy.