The ruling supported arguments made by Saul Luciano Lliuya, who claimed that RWE should pay towards the cost of protecting his hometown near the city of Huaraz in northern Peru from a lake glacier swollen by melting snow and ice.
“So you have to figure out other ways to do that,” Karen Greenaway, a former FBI investigator who tracks international money laundering schemes, told Al Jazeera. One way around: individual gold miners, who don’t face those restrictions.This scenario makes Zimbabwe fertile ground for money launderers who can help the country earn dollars in exchange for gold.
The president’s nieceCentral to Angel’s gold-for-dirty money operations is Henrietta Rushwaya, president of the Zimbabwe Miners Association. Rushwaya, who is also President Mnangagwa’s niece, told Angel and the reporters on a phone call that smuggling 100kg of gold each week would be no problem.The scheme would need an initial investment of $10mn of dirty cash into the government’s gold refinery, Fidelity. Of that, $5mn would be held in reserve by Fidelity for the duration of the scam, with the rest being used every week to buy gold.
Once the gold is bought, another $5mn would be brought in to buy more gold until all the money had been laundered into the precious metal — which would then be sold internationally for legitimate, clean cash.Do you have information on money laundering or want to share another tip? Contact Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit on +974 5080 0207 (WhatsApp/Signal), or find other ways to reach out on our
“They can buy the gold directly in cash, because we are the only sector in the country that is paying in foreign exchange on a cash basis,” Rushwaya said during the call.
During the meetings, Angel and Doolan, also a British pastor and music artist, said everything they were doing had the blessings of ‘number one’, referring to Mnangagwa. Doolan even offered to set up a face-to-face meeting with Mnangagwa on the sidelines of the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in 2021.“Our production has only grown for the last two years. Of course, there are challenges. For instance, our company was an exclusive dealer of an American agriculture machinery brand, and since it announced the suspension of shipments, there is no legal way to buy their tractor[s] in Russia,” the manager, whose company has farms across Russia, told Al Jazeera.
“But the lifespan of a tractor is more than 10 years, so the effect would not be immediate. Yes, there are risks and we are taking steps to mitigate them”.As for ethical concerns, the manager said her conscience is undisturbed.
“We have 220,000 cows in Russia. Whatever we think about the war and invasion, what choice do we have? We must continue working and find solutions to overcome everyday difficulties,” she said.The Trump administration has paused new visa interviews for international students set to attend US universities.