Posted on 07/24/2002 7:17:03 PM PDT by Clive
SEVERAL Cabinet ministers and top officials of the ruling ZANU PF are being squeezed by sanctions slapped by the European Union (EU) and are scrambling for meagre foreign currency in Zimbabwe to pay fees for their children studying abroad, it was established yesterday.
Banking and government sources confirmed that most Cabinet ministers and members of ZANU PF's supreme Politburo were jostling for the limited hard cash that is available, wiping it out from indigenous commercial banks most of the times.
The leaders were raiding banks in which the government has a shareholding or where the individual politicians had a stake.
"We have been assisting a lot of politicians with foreign currency for school fees for their children abroad, using the little foreign currency that we manage to lay our hands on," one senior banking source told the Financial Gazette.
"A majority of them have been experiencing severe difficulties in fulfilling this obligation in time because of the current economic and political problems. In some instances, we have had to make exclusive arrangements for them to take the hard cash that comes through."
Children of most Cabinet ministers and ZANU PF officials study in the West, especially in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada - countries which have taken a tough line against Zimbabwean leaders over the country's bloated human rights record.
Official sources say most ZANU PF politicians hit by the sanctions are making frantic efforts to transfer their children from overseas to complete their studies at colleges and universities in South Africa, where the leaders have transferred their foreign bank accounts.
Others want to bring their children back home.
The politicians have been sourcing scarce foreign currency at the official exchange rate from Zimbabwean banks, a privilege not enjoyed by members of the public.
"By a directive, we recently gave one senior Cabinet minister and Politburo member US$10,000 cash at the official exchange for school fees for his children who are in the US," one bank manager said.
"We had to call up all our resources which we had at our various branches to ensure that the minister got the foreign currency," the manager said. "We handle many similar cases of this nature."
The Financial Gazette cannot however disclose the names of the individual politicians involved because of the standard bank-client confidentiality.
It is understood that most commercial banks, if and whenever they have the hard cash, usually trade it on the thriving parallel market rate.
The sources said some ZANU PF leaders had resorted to employing touts to purchase foreign currency on the parallel market to augment their resources while others were using fronts to run foreign currency bureaux at major Zimbabwean tourist resorts.
The government has itself been accused of mobilising hard cash from the parallel mark to finance its many official trips.
President Robert Mugabe, fresh from a four-day visit to Cuba, this week attacked the country's banks which he accused of fuelling the foreign currency crisis by allegedly engaging in illegal transactions.
He ruled out a devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar, which Reserve Bank governor Leonard Tsumba, Finance Minister Simba Makoni and most economists agree is highly over-valued.
The local dollar is pegged at $55 against one American dollar, although it trades at more than $600 on the parallel market. The dollar is also fixed against the currencies of Britain, South Africa and Botswana - among Zimbabwe's major trading partners.
The EU this week slapped the entire ZANU PF Politburo, Cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and deputy Politburo members, Grace Mugabe and many other government functionaries with a travel ban and asset freeze, including their bank accounts.
Alex Kremer, first secretary of the EU delegation in Harare, said yesterday the EU policy on ZANU PF politicians was not yet to target their spouses and children.
The US, New Zealand, Switzerland and Canada have similar measures in place.
Western diplomats said they could not rule out the possibility of sanctions being slapped on the leaders' spouses and children, as well as on foreign companies which are being used by ZANU PF to try to evade the overseas asset freeze.
The parallel rate represents the true price of the foreign money, which is what a willing buyer will pay to a willing seller.
As a matter of curiosity, while in a shopping mall in Toronto last week I went to the Thomas Cook foreign exchange booth to ask what it was quoting on Zim dollars.
I was told that Zim money was not being traded in either direction anywhere in Canada at any price.
In effect, the Zim money is worthless and the Cabinet Ministers are simply stealing the foreign currency from the bank's shareholders.
So, they get the money on their terms or someone gets shot, huh?
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