Businessmen with links to Mugabe in ‘Panama Papers’
Two Zimbabwean businessmen are among the personalities on the books of a Panama law firm accused of helping people to avoid sanctions and evade tax.
|||Harare - Two prominent Zimbabwean businessmen, Billy Rautenbach and John Bredenkamp, are among the personalities and companies that have been on the books of a Panama law firm accused of helping politicians, businesses and celebrities avoid sanctions, evade tax and launder money through illicit financial flows.
The Panama Papers also named the Zimbabwe unit of South African-owned Impala Platinum, which is accused of paying management using an offshore company. Implats refuted knowledge of the offshore company, HR Consultancy, and stressed that it paid its Zimbabwe employees from inside the country.
Read: How Mossack and Fonseca built their empire
The leaked documents, which have implicated several other Zimbabwean companies whose finer details are still emerging, have been investigated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).
Close ties
The two wealthy Zimbabwean businessmen have for long been regarded as having close ties to President Robert Mugabe and his family.
However, Bredenkamp has previously denied these links and had successfully lobbied for the removal of his name from the list of companies and individuals slapped with sanctions by the US.
According to the leaked documents, the Panama law firm, Mossack Fonseca cut its ties with Bredenkamp and his companies in 2009, having reportedly served him since 1997. Prior to this, the Office for Foreign Assets Control put Bredenkamp, a “well-known Mugabe insider” on its sanctions list, saying he was a “crony” of the aged leader, according to a report by the ICIJ.
The Zimbabwean businessman was not immediately reachable for comment yesterday. However, sources in Zimbabwe said the Panama documents should be investigated by tax authorities, especially at a time when there is growing evidence of illicit financial flows in the country.
Bredenkamp has had court feuds, some of which he has lost, with fellow businessmen in Zimbabwe over money borrowed to support state troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
“It took seven years before a Mossack Fonseca employee reported internally that an internet search implicated a separate company the law firm said was owned by Bredenkamp in a series of allegations concerning arms deals,” a report says.
In 2005, Mossack Fonseca circulated a memo in which it detailed its decision to drop “as soon as possible” about 35 companies deemed as risky. It cited in the memo “recent changes in our organisation” and “regulatory matters” that could have a bearing on it.
Apart from mentioning Bredenkamp, the Panama Papers also name Rautenbach, another business tycoon and property magnate in Zimbabwe as having violated the US’s sanctions on companies and businesses deemed as propping up Mugabe’s regime.
Restricted
Rautenbach and a company he was said to have had links with, Ridgepoint Overseas Developments, were restricted from doing business with corporates and citizens in the US until about 2014. Ridgepoint had listed a British Virgin Islands office run by Mossack Fonseca as its official address, a situation that was deemed as a violation of the restrictions.
The Panama law firm has denied it knowingly engaged people and companies with ties to restricted firms and individuals in Zimbabwe. It said on Monday that, “if for some reason, unbeknown to us, some company formed by us ended up in the hands of people having such relations for whatever criminal or unlawful purpose, we strongly condemned that situation”.
It said it had taken and would seek to “continue taking any measures that are reasonably available to us” to avoid such situations. Rautenbach was also not available for comment.
The leaked Panama Papers have prompted calls for tax authorities to tighten the noose on shell companies and tighten laws on foreign currency externalisation.
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