How Kuda Tagwirei Built Alleged Offshore Investments
The Sentry, an investigative and policy team claims that business mogul, Kuda Tagwirei used complex corporate structures to establish both local and offshore investments.
The organisation further claims that Tagwirei has invested in gold, nickel, platinum, and chrome mines by hiding behind South African businesspeople and offshore structures in Mauritius and the Cayman Islands and by using lawyers and financiers.
The Sentry says it has discovered documents that show how Tagwirei has used similar networks to hide his financial interests in Zimbabwe’s new public-private partnership mining company, Kuvimba Mining House, with Zimbabwe’s Finance Ministry reportedly collaborating to deflect public scrutiny from these arrangements.
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The said documents suggest that in 2019, Tagwirei paid millions of dollars to a Zimbabwean military-owned company so that Landela Mining Ventures, a company he controlled, could purchase 50% of Great Dyke Investments (GDI), a platinum mine worth hundreds of millions and run as a joint venture with a Russian firm.
A year later, Zimbabwe granted GDI a five-year corporate income tax holiday and exempted its shareholders resident in Zimbabwe from resident shareholders’ taxes on GDI dividends — retroactively applied to January 1, 2020.
Auditors investigating corruption red flags in a 2016 $630 million Dema diesel generating plant contract found that the Office of the President had improperly interfered with the procurement process, ordering officials to evaluate Tagwirei’s sole bid outside the standard process.
Between 2018 and 2020, Sotic International, a holding company based in Mauritius believed to be one of the very important entities in Tagwirei’s corporate puzzle:
- entered into an arrangement to buy 85% of ZimAlloys, a ferrochrome producer based in Gweru, in the center of Zimbabwe.
- bought 75% of Bindura Nickel, owner of Trojan Nickel Mine, and 85% of Freda Rebecca Gold Mine, in Bindura, northwest of Harare, for $29.2 million. (The transaction was for £23 million.)
- bought 50% of Great Dyke Investments, a platinum joint venture with a Russian company, in Darwendale, to the west of Harare, for at least $21.5 million.
- bought 100% of How, Shamva, Mazowe, and Redwing gold mines for an unknown amount, believed by Fourie to be tens of millions of US dollars.
- bought 100% of mines formerly owned by the parastatal Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC): Jena Mines, Elvington Mine, Sabi, Golden Kopje, and Sandawana. The purchase price has not been disclosed.
