The first lady was focused on two investments designed to keep the
Mugabes rich should they one day be forced into exile from Zimbabwe,
where thousands are starving and ravaged by cholera and opponents are
jailed, beaten and tortured.
One investment was a £4m Hong Kong property in a walled and gated
complex where residents enjoy quiet gardens, a clubhouse and a swimming
pool. The other was a multi-million-pound diamond venture she is
considering launching in China. This involves locating a centre for
cutting and polishing diamonds at Qingdao, on China's east coast, in
conjunction with Zimbabwe's central bank, which is notorious for
funding her extravagant travels abroad.
The associate with whom she was discussing the diamonds also had a hand in the purchase of the property.
Last week the Mugabes' bolt-hole in Hong Kong was exposed by a Sunday
Times investigation that highlighted a web of financial intrigue
stretching across some of the most exotic and luxurious spots in the
Far East, from Malaysia and Singapore to Thailand and Vietnam. It also
focused attention on the aggressive methods the Mugabes have used to
protect their interests, whether political or financial.
When two journalists went to photograph the house on Friday they were
attacked by three African occupants intent on defending the secret of
its ownership. Both journalists required medical attention.
It is the first time a Mugabe property in the Far East has been
publicly identified despite rumours that the dictator, 84, and his
wife, 40 years younger, own several in the region.
This newspaper has established that early last year a man called Hsieh
Ping-Sung – whom Grace Mugabe knows as Jack – began helping her to
buy an opulent residence from a UK-based vendor. Hsieh is the holder of
a South African passport which shows that he was born in Durban in
1959. Authoritative sources in Zimbabwe say he has an office in Harare,
the capital, and often stays at Meikles, its grandest hotel.
Towards the end of January 2008, Hsieh flew from Hong Kong to Harare,
having made thousands of dollars' worth of purchases, including
footwear and T-shirts, on behalf of Grace Mugabe. The items may have
been intended for distribution to her husband's supporters during
campaigning for an election the president stole from Morgan Tsvangirai,
his rival.
Six months later, on June 28, Cross Global, a company Hsieh had bought
off the shelf, acquired House Number Three, JC Castle, 18 Shan Tong
Road, Tai Po, for HK$40m (now £3.6m). Sources in Zimbabwe say the
Mugabes have the controlling interest in the property. JC Castle is in
an isolated estate on a hill surrounded by verdant countryside in the
northern reaches of the former British colony.
Its villas and flats cater mostly for affluent Chinese fleeing the smog
of Hong Kong's densely populated central districts. By Hong Kong's
compact standards, the properties are generously proportioned and
command high prices.
The complex is developed and managed by one of Hong Kong's richest and
most colourful tycoons, Albert Yeung, whose Emperor group promotes the
estate on its website.
Yeung has interests in the casino and entertainment industries and has
long been linked by the Hong Kong press to the triad underworld gangs
that infest those industries. While he has been investigated by the
antitriad division of the Hong Kong police and has appeared in court,
he has never been convicted and denies any wrongdoing.
Attempts to reach Hsieh were unsuccessful: an Indian man who answered
the door at the company's registered address, a flat in a tenement
block, said he was away.
Western governments say that Mugabe runs one of Africa's most corrupt
regimes and that the president, his cronies and the first lady – known
as Dis Grace, First Shopper and Grasping Grace by critics who decry her
lavish shopping sprees – have siphoned millions of pounds from Zimbabwe
and concealed it in bank accounts and property investments, many in the
Far East.
Banned from the European Union and America, the Mugabes have come to
regard Asia as a haven where they can go on holiday, indulge themselves
unnoticed and guard their investments.
Like other members of Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF elite, they have
educated their children at Asian universities. Grace's son Russell, by
her first marriage, to a Zimbabwean air force officer, has been a
student in Bangkok. Bona, her daughter by Mugabe, is studying in Hong
Kong.
The Mugabes are said to have spent years establishing an eastern
financial empire. The president boasted that his policy of building
friendship with China and the Asian tigers was bringing new economic
partnerships and opportunities to his impoverished nation.
We have turned east, where the sun rises, and given our back to the
west, where the sun sets, he has been fond of saying. His opponents
rubbish this look east policy as, in effect, crooks east, largely
for Mugabe's benefit.
The Mugabes have meticulously cultivated a network of partners and
hangers-on across the region to nurture their interests and perform
favours.
One of the most important roles of such fixers has been to pamper Grace
Mugabe and satisfy her voracious appetite for luxury goods ranging from
handbags to gems.
On one trip to Paris in 2003, after finding a loophole in a European
Union travel ban, she was estimated to have spent £75,000 on luxury
items in a day. She was reportedly once seen with 15 trolley-loads of
such treasures in the first-class lounge of Singapore airport. Her
champagne lifestyle has been funded throughout by Gideon Gono, head of
the central bank, who is said to have given her £64,000 for her most
recent holiday.
An £8,700 handbag bought in Singapore is one of her latest
acquisitions. On a trip to Vietnam she purchased £55,500 worth of
marble statues from Nguyen Hung, a sculptor, for the extravagant
mansion she was building in Harare.
Her visit in autumn 2006 is still remembered with a chuckle in Danang.
Hung's brother Nam said yesterday: The VIP lady bought many marble
statues here, lots of vases and animal statues. She stayed just one day
but she had seen our website and had been communicating with us for a
long time by e-mail. Some of the statues took six months toa year to
complete.
Grace Mugabe's acquisitiveness seems to know no bounds. In Zimbabwe,
where she already has several farms, she has just seized another, this
one from a High Court judge who had taken it from its original white
owner. She apparently wanted the property for Russell, her son.
There is no definitive accounting of the Mugabe family's wealth.
Authoritative sources in Zimbabwe say they have hidden millions away at
a bank in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. Gono, who manages their
finances, and Constantine Chiwenga, chief of the defence forces,
allegedly have accounts at the same bank. The sources believe that a
team of accountants suspected of links to Mugabe and his henchmen
manage 10 to 12 accounts in a separate bank in the city.
Mugabe has long made a virtue of developing a strong relationship with
Malaysia, a country that he and Grace love to visit and where they are
believed to have property as well as bank accounts. It was Enock
Kamushinda, an Indian-educated Zimbabwean banker, who was the driving
force to establish such links with southeast Asia.
Kamushinda was financial adviser to Mugabe's first wife, Sally, whose
death from kidney failure in 1992 freed the president to marry Grace,
his mistress and secretary. Although Kamushinda left Zimbabwe after
investigations into alleged financial irregularities and now lives in
exile, he remains close to the Mugabes. Sources said he still times his
trips to Malaysia, where he established the only overseas branch of a
Zimbabwean bank, to coincide with the president's.
In 2002 Kamushinda was placed on a blacklist by the United States and
other countries as one of a number of businessmen who supported
Mugabe's regime. His name was later removed.
While Malaysia – in particular the Berjaya Langkawi beach and spa
resort on the island of Langkawi – is the Mugabes' favoured holiday
destination, they also like to visit Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangkok.
Wherever they go they readily turn their backs on the grinding poverty
of their country and spare no expense at their luxury accommodation –
the Meritus Mandarin in Singapore, the Shangri-La in Hong Kong and the
InterContinental in Bangkok. On some occasions two floors of a hotel
have been shut off for their entourage.
All the hotels are luxurious but some aspects of the Mugabes' financial
dealings are decidedly shabby. They involve the back streets of Hong
Kong, dodgy paperwork and hotel bills settled with bags of cash.
In addition to Hsieh in Hong Kong, the money trail throws up an odd
cast of Asian characters in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Singapore, acting
as courtiers for the Mugabes.
One is Mahmood Awang Kechik, a Malay urologist and specialist in
erectile dysfunction who is Mugabe's personal physician. Kechik has
treated him for prostate problems for years but the relationship
developed into a business one. Just over a year ago, Kechik abandoned
his medical practice and went into business.
In Thailand is Nalinee Joy Taveesin, a prosperous and well connected
businesswoman who prides herself on her charity work and who is
president of the Thai-Australian Association.
In November, the US Treasury Department tightened sanctions against
Mugabe and the cronies who had ruthlessly campaigned to keep him in
power through the violent intimidation of opponents who had defeated
him and his party at the polls.
As a result Kechik and Taveesin both found themselves blacklisted. Any
assets within US jurisdiction were frozen and Americans were prohibited
from conducting transactions with them.
The US Treasury Department was particularly hard on Taveesin, accusing
her of facilitating financial, real-estate and gem-related transactions
on behalf of Grace Mugabe and Gono while participating in good works.
Ironically, Nalinee Taveesin has participated in a number of
initiatives on corruption and growth challenges in Africa and southeast
Asia while secretly supporting the kleptocratic practices of one of
Africa's most corrupt regimes, it said.
Taveesin confirmed last week that she had been a friend of the Mugabes
for years, but said: I have no business involvement with the Mugabes.
The US Treasury Department claimed that Kechik had been conducting
secret transactions with a number of Zimbabweans under sanctions,
including Gono and Chiwenga, the defence chief, to generate wealth for
them and for the regime. It also said he had used his medical practice
to disguise the ultimate destination of medical equipment shipped to
Mugabe. Associates of Kechik said last week that they had no idea where
he had gone.
In Singapore the Mugabes' facilitator is a businessman, Jeffrey Ng,
owner of Microware Systems. Sources in Zimbabwe said that Ng had helped
to buy the $12,500 handbag for Grace Mugabe. He also maintained contact
with Bona, studying in Hong Kong, and with Gabriel, a nephew of Mugabe
who has undergone medical treatment in Singapore.
The importance of Ng's role was demonstrated in January when Mugabe
gave him dinner at the Mandarin hotel, where he was staying. Ng is
believed to be arranging to ship more than $500,000 of computers and
other electronic equipment to Zimbabwe.
Last week The Sunday Times approached Ng to ask about his relationship
with the tyrant. After confirming that he was Jeffrey, he said: You
are talking to the wrong man in the wrong place. This is Singapore.
Then he broke off the conversation and walked away.
This weekend the Mugabes were in Harare, where the president entered a
power-sharing agreement with Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic
Change shortly before locking up two of its most prominent members.
However, he and his wife will need to start worrying about the security
of their Far Eastern investments. These will come under closer scrutiny
by the financial authorities in Hong Kong, where new money-laundering
laws have created a special category of politically exposed persons
for surveillance. Experts say regulators appear obliged to monitor
their transactions.
The Hong Kong legislation defines such persons as government, judicial,
military and political party officials, plus their families and
associates, from countries where corruption is widespread and says
the risk factors include unexplained wealth, the use of accounts at a
government bank and any request for secrecy.
By any yardstick, the Mugabes fit that category.
Post published in: News