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Last Updated: Jan 11, 2009 - 11:37:18 AM |
The history of the Democratic Republic of Congo has always been one of
greed and corruption. In 1998 a 5 year conflict erupted between
government forces, backed by Angola , Namibia and Zimbabwe , against
rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda . The fighting was fuelled by the
enormous mineral wealth of the DRC and everyone took advantage of the
chance to plunder the natural resources, which included gold and
diamonds. The war has been described as Africa ’s world war and Robert
Mugabe’s support in this conflict saw the beginning of the collapse of
Zimbabwe ’s economy, when he committed Zimbabwean troops to the
conflict. An estimated 5 million people died in the DRC , mainly
because of the humanitarian crisis that resulted.
For its support, Zimbabwe was given a number of concessions by the DRC
government, that allowed it to plunder the vast natural resources of
the country, including gold and diamonds. A United Nations report and
another report by Global Witness, detailed the criminal activities that
resulted. The reports clearly showed that Zimbabwe ’s ruling elite and
all the senior defence force officials were, and still are, involved in
the plunder. In August 2002 United Nations investigations revealed a
memorandum from the Defence Minister Sidney Sekeramayi, to Robert
Mugabe, proposing that a joint Zimbabwe- DRC company be set up in
Mauritius , to disguise the continuing economic interests of the
Zimbabwe Defence Forces in the DRC .
The UN report showed that an elite network of Congolese and Zimbabwean
political, military and commercial interests transferred ownership of
at least US$5 billion of assets from the State mining sector to private
companies under its control, with no compensation or benefit for the
State treasury of the DRC. Unfortunately this plunder continues and in
Hotseat we speak to Mr. Felix Eimer who says he was recently contacted
by the daughter of Vice President Joice Mujuru, Nyasha del Campo, who
tried to set up a deal involving illegal gold from the DRC . She and
her husband Pedro live in Madrid in Spain and have set up two
companies, allegedly with the help and financial support of her mother.
The company who were offered this gold is Firstar Europe, a company
which trades in raw materials. I first asked Mr. Eimer to explain what
had happened.
FE: OK I’m working with a company called Firstar. Basically I am
involved in the steel trading with Iraq and through my network, and a
gold deal was proposed to me that was initiated by Nyasha del Campo and
I’ve got several documents about this deal which was gold from the
Congo and as I’m not specialist in these kind of commodities I’ve sent
the whole document to the company, to Firstar and their due diligence
had the result that there’s a high criminal background and this gold is
illegal blood gold from Congo. This is the basic line and when I talked
to that fact with Nyasha, she told me that it’s no problem, we can
change the origin of the gold to gold from Kenya and this was the point
where everyone of us was very concerned.
GJ: Can you just clarify, because from some of the documents that I’ve
seen it would appear that Nyasha is living in Spain with her Spanish
husband and that they have two companies and they are involved in quite
a lot of this. Would that be correct?
FE: Yeah, they are doing a lot of commodity tradings, all commodities
like diamonds where Africa ’s very strong, diamonds, gold, DT fuel and
I’ve not really got the point how these companies interact. The only
thing I know is that her mother is financing all these companies and in
our case, she wanted to finance the transport to Zurich of the gold
which costs about 150 to 200 thousand US dollars.
GJ: What alerted you initially to the fact that this was not a legal
deal?
FE: OK as I told you before, I’m not a specialist in that case and as I
had all the documents collected on my table I sent it to Firstar which
has a high political background on the board of directors and they have
the possibilities to do a really deep due diligence and the result of
the due diligence was that all the people involved, all the passports
I’ve got for the visas they needed to enter Zurich, to enter
Switzerland, the result was that all this background, the gold is blood
gold and these people are highly criminal people, even they are known
at several organisations, so this has all been the result of Firstar’s
due diligence work. This is not the result from my work.
GJ: For people who don’t deal in these areas, can you explain how a
deal like this works? Why would people like this have to travel to
Zurich , to Switzerland ?
FE: OK this special case, the gold from Africa is brought to
Switzerland by aeroplane and then it is brought to the refineries and
after the refinery you have the result how much is the value of the
gold and then the transaction, the bank transaction, the payment
transaction is directly done between the seller and the buyer in
Zurich. In this case in Zurich because the refinery is in Zurich . So
both parties have to be at this place to organise payment, to organise
the completion of the transaction.
GJ: You are talking specifically about gold here, but you mentioned
diamonds at the beginning as well. Was there anything more to do with a
diamond transaction?
FE: The diamond transaction was done separately. I stopped it from the
beginning because I wanted to concentrate on one transaction and as I
had this information about this criminal background I stopped the
diamond transaction so I don’t have any deeper knowledge about the
origin or anything concerning this diamond deal.
GJ: Now some of the documents I’ve seen include photographs of gold
nuggets. Are those photographs that Nyasha sent to you?
FE: Yep. Those pictures were sent to us, to me to my table from Nyasha,
right.
GJ: So what are we saying, that Nyasha’s actually sitting in her office
or at home with tin buckets full of gold nuggets?
FE: No, these nuggets, these gold nuggets are actually located, this is
my knowledge, this is what Nyasha told me, are located in Nairobi at
the airport ready to transport. But the origin of the gold is from
Congo and the gold had to be transported from Nairobi to Zurich and the
last issue was that her mother financed or wanted to finance these
transports and had already released the funds for that, but the gold is
physically in Africa.
GJ: Since this began, have you learnt anymore about Nyasha and how she
operates with her family or have you had any dealings with Mrs Mujuru
herself or have you only been dealing with Nyasha?
FE: I have been dealing with Nyasha directly and know that her mother
is behind all these deals and she is financing all these deals and she
is giving the possibilities to her daughter to access to all these
deals, to get contact to the people that are high criminal. I mean this
is the background and she is trying to help her daughter to start up a
business selling commodities from Africa like gold and diamonds to
Europe or to investors. At the end of the day, I only know that
Firstar’s office had contact with Mrs Mujuru but not me personally.
GJ: Is there any way, in your opinion, that these diamonds and this
gold could in any way be legal?
FE: In my opinion, when someone tells you that he can change the
origin, the origin of the gold that comes from Congo , the only reason
that someone does this is that the gold is from criminal background.
This is my personal opinion. Because there is no need to change any
origin if the gold is not bloody.
GJ: I do have to ask you of course why would you and your company at
this stage be willing to tell the world about what is happening here
because it is unusual that anyone is so open about illegal transactions
that have been offered to them.
FE: OK so this came from the company directly, from the board of
directors, as I told you there are a lot of high level politicians on
the board of directors and this is a very straight company, they don’t
want to do any illegal deals and with that, they try to get these
people out of the market. They do it because they will try to sell it
to other companies and in this way they try to circumvent other people
to get into this transaction. This is the reason why Firstar management
decided to go to the media.
GJ: If these allegations are true this must surely not be the first
time that the Mujurus and Nyasha have tried to do this. Could people
assume that there are deals going on with other companies at this time
and have been going on for sometime?
FE: Yes I know that because the broker market in this special segment
is very small and I know that they have tried to sell this gold that we
refused because of the criminal background, to other companies, to
other buyers and to other investors. That is true, we know that, I know
that and this has also been the motivation why Firstar decided to go to
the press, to the media. Also due to the fact that actually the
situation, the political situation in Zimbabwe is very unstable and
yeah, this is more a personal motivation from the management of Firstar
to do this.
GJ: This particular transaction that we are talking about, this one
gold transaction, is it a large amount of gold, is this a big amount of
money?
FE: Yeah, this is a big amount of money.
GJ: Can you give me any idea of what sort of amount we’re talking about?
FE: The total transaction is about 35 to 40 million US dollars.
GJ: And that’s just this one transaction and as far as you understand
there would have been others?
FE: Yeah, it was planned to do it on a monthly basis, so to sell this
amount with a value of 35 to 40 million US dollars on a monthly basis,
so to make one transaction each month. This was planned from the……..
this was the proposition from Nyasha del Campo’s side.
GJ: Do you have any idea if Nyasha’s husband is involved in this as
well, because I see from the documents that he’s set up the companies
with her. Is he just being used in this case or is he an active
participant as well?
FE: He is active. Nyasha is in Madrid . She is coordinating the whole
paperwork and her husband, Pedro del Campo, is in Africa and is
organising the whole infrastructure like transport of the gold, making
the meetings in Africa , meeting the people that are selling the gold
because they are not owner of the gold, they just have access to this
gold. And he is the one that is in Africa and that is organising all
the infrastructure. So he is active part of the companies.
GJ: Do you feel in any way concerned about your safety with the fact
that you are now revealing these details?
FE: Yes, a little bit. I mean, if I would live in South Africa, I would
not talk open about that, but as I am living in Germany I am feeling
concerned but I’m not feeling, I mean, I think that I am safe here but
I guess that these people that are dealing with illegal gold, with
weapons and stuff like that this is dangerous and I would not do this
interview if I would be in another country……….
GJ: That was Mr. Felix Eimer who was willing to be interviewed about
these allegations. We were hoping to speak to another representative of
the company Firstar but this interview was declined because of security
concerns. The gentleman in question did say that he had had a direct
threat from Joice Mujuru herself after they set up a company blacklist
that included Nyasha del Campo, her husband Pedro, and Joice Mujuru. He
said that Mrs. Mujuru told him that if they were not taken off the
black list – he would be ‘visited’ in the next couple of weeks. We
tried phoning Nyasha del Campo, but could not get through, so we
emailed her and her husband, to which we received an email response
from a Mr. Dancor Spies, of TAU refineries, who claimed that he was the
sole principal of the alleged gold transaction and that Nyasha and her
husband have no executive authority and so he would respond to
questions. But a representative of Firstar says that Mr. Spies told him
that he represented Joice Mujuru herself. We await further response
from Mr. Spies.
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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