Zimbabwean police are investigating former ruler Robert Mugabe’s
wife Grace, accused of smuggling ivory worth millions to underground foreign
markets, a state-owned weekly reported Sunday.
The Sunday Mail said investigators from the parks and wildlife
authority handed documents to police showing that the former first lady
“spirited large consignments of ivory to China, the United Arab Emirates and
the United States among other destinations.”
Police spokeswoman Charity Charamba confirmed receiving a report
but declined to elaborate when questioned by AFP.
The Sunday Mail said the report accused Grace Mugabe of ordering
officials to grant her permits to export the ivory as gifts to the leaders of
various countries.
“Once outside Zimbabwe, the ‘gifts’ would be pooled together
with other consignments of the product and routed to black markets,” The Sunday
Mail reported.
A senior official in the presidency, Christopher Mutsvangwa,
told the paper the government was tipped off by an unnamed whistleblower.
“Police and whistleblowers laid a trap for suppliers believed to
be working for Grace Mugabe,” Mutsvangwa said.
“The culprits were caught and that is how investigations
started. When we were confronted with so much evidence, there is no way we
could ignore.”
The paper said police may question the former first lady soon.
Grace Mugabe was tipped alongside the current President Emmerson
Mnangagwa to succeed Mugabe, who ruled Zimbabwe since independence from British
colonial rule in 1980 until he was forced to step down in November 2017
following a military takeover.
She earned the sobriquet “Gucci Grace” for her lavish lifestyle.
Zimbabwe has suffered rampant poaching of elephants, targeted
for their ivory tusks which are used for ornaments and medicines.
At least 400 elephants died from cyanide poisoning in Hwange,
Zimbabwe’s biggest national park in the northwest of the country, between 2013
and 2015.
But parks director-general Fulton Mangwanya said poaching had
declined since Mugabe’s ouster.
“Poaching levels have dropped sharply in Hwange because the
market has been disturbed,” The Sunday Mail quoted him as saying.
AFP
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