PRESIDENTIAL Envoy and Ambassador-at-Large Uebert Angel’s business partner Rikki Doolan sys it is possible to bring in millions of dollars in dirty money into Zimbabwe as long as officials are bribed and President Emmerson Mnangagwa is informed it is for investment.
Doolan, who is married to Angel’s niece Nicola, told undercover Al Jazeera investigative reporters posing as gangsters who wanted to launder dirty money that they may even be granted a VIP police escort once they come to Zimbabwe.
He told them dirty money could be brought into the country and laundered without questions asked, especially if Mnangagwa is roped in.
Speaking in the documentary’s second edition released on Thursday, Doolan, who said he preferred to refer to Mnangagwa as Number One, insisted that once he is made aware of their arrival, they would get easy passage into the country with loads of cash and get away with gold.
Doolan said however meeting Mnangagwa comes with a facilitation fee of US$200 000.
Before his conversation with Al Jazeera undercover reporters who postured as gangsters from China wishing to clean over US$100 million, a man whom he said was his chief security officer collected mobile phones of all the people in the room, to avoid recording and eavesdropping.
A lady who posed as Ms Sin, a financial adviser to Mr Stanely, a Chinese gangster, told Doolan:
“We want to be very clear. We are cash rich. It’s embarrassing. This is black money. This is money which cannot be declared. And we need jurisdictions which are not that rigid.”
In response, Doolan said: “I like embarrasing cash . . . That is why you need this team of people Mnangagwa and Prophet Angel whom he has scribed in his book as Number 1 and principal.
“So during this conversation, we will not mention names. I don’t think we need to. Principal. You know who my principal is. We know who the number one is. Number One is the President.
“As long as you grease the wheels in Africa, there is no issue. And this protection is from Number One. Now the greasing of the wheels we are going to figure that out ourselves using this team to make sure that everybody is taken care of, everybody is happy, and things move without questions being asked.”There is no way it can never happen. How can questions be asked when these people are happy?
“The police, banks, customs, immigration (will not ask questions on dirty money). This is the executive power.”
“Work with me on everything. And what I am going to do is make sure that through these people (Mnangagwa and Prophet Angel) it happens. That this person (Mnangagwa) knows everything… that you are bringing in this amount, you are investing in this, doing this, and he will be like ‘oh very good, okay, no problem’. Meaning that probably when you arrive at the airport on that private jet, you will have a motorcade to take you to where you need to go.”
Ms Sin then asked: So it (dirty money) becomes legal?”
And Doolan responded: “More than legal. It becomes protected at the highest level. So that you arrive as investors, not people trying to sneak things through the border. As soon as you arrive in that country, you are now treated as executives. And it’s a system that is secured. Everything will be done with this person’s knowledge (Mnangagwa).”
At that point an Al Jazeera undercover reporter asked: “You mean Number One?”
“Of course,” replied Doolan.
But in response to the documentary which has been circulated on social media, Doolan said he had no intention of fuelling any dirty deals with the undercover reporters.
“The documentary which has been circulated is brutally edited, to portray a false narrative. I am not a gold dealer and I have never been. So that portion is a false narrative,” he said.
“These fake journalists, or businesspeople, they approached me with a now known false proposal of course of building a US$1.2 billion hotel in Victoria Falls which would have been an outstanding achievement. They are presenting this as a secret investigation yet it was not that.
“Maybe they placed secret cameras in some places that would make it appear as if it was not with our knowledge. But there was a prior conversation minutes before, where we talked about them filming a few minutes of our conversation to show their bosses that this was legitimate meeting. But we now realise that their intention was to record the President of Zimbabwe, which was unfair.
“The intelligence blocked them from meeting and filming the President. That is the person that they really wanted to record,” he said.
Source: bulawayo24
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