



One of the most interesting articles I published last year, but one that failed to receive the attention it deserved, was related to a $100 million “loan” to Zimbabwe’s brutal dictator Robert Mugabe, in which Wall Street firms played a key role. The post was titled, The Bailout of Robert Mugabe – How Wall Street Money Led to Intimidation, Torture and Death in Zimbabwe. Here are a few excerpts:
Four days later, Camec announced it was using the money it raised to purchase a joint venture with the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corp., or ZMDC, Mugabe’s state-owned mining company. The joint venture owned the platinum stakes on the Great Dyke that had been taken back just a few weeks earlier from Anglo American. The price included $5 million in cash; Camec issued shares to partners whose identities were shielded by a shell company based in the British Virgin Islands; and $100 million to Mugabe’s government.
Camec said the $100 million was a cash loan “to comply with its contractual obligations to the government of Zimbabwe” for the platinum claims. It said the money would be repaid out of ZMDC’s share of future platinum earnings. Camec’s balance sheets for the period make clear that funding for the platinum rights came from the private transactions involving Och-Ziff.
The $100 million figure mentioned above that flowed directly to Zimbabwe’s brutal dictator Robert Mugabe was more than just a cash infusion to a corrupt dictator. Rather, it was a veritable political lifeline to a desperate and vulnerable despot. Facing defeat in the initial round of elections to the opposition, and with the nation’s currency hyper-inflating, the only thing he had at his disposal were valuable platinum assets that were at the time held by Anglo American Platinum. So Mugabe did what any desperate tyrant would do. He expropriated the assets from Anglo-American and immediately put them on the market to raise money to crush his opposition. Enter Wall Street.
This is where the Central African Mining & Exploration Co., or Camec, sniffed opportunity. Seemingly set up specifically to buy assets on the cheap from desperate African dictators, Camec immediately set out to raise funding to provide Mugabe with much need cash in exchange for the recently stolen platinum assets. Camec had no trouble raising this money from a variety of Wall Street firms, with the core participant being the massive hedge fund Och-Ziff, which contributed 75%, but also included BlackRock, GLG Partners and Credit Suisse.
Mugabe immediately used the money to intimidate, torture and murder opposition leaders until his primary opponent pulled out of the race. The ninety year-old Mugabe remains in power, while many of the Wall Street titans have retired lavishly to multi-million dollar retreats in the English countryside.
The excellent Bloomberg article from which that post was based, mentioned that Och-Ziff was under investigation by the Justice Department. I noted at the time:
Let the Justice Department and SEC investigate. Nothing meaningful will come out of it. Too many rich and powerful people got paid, and as Larry Summers so crudely admitted in 2009 “insiders don’t criticize insiders.” Just like how Jaime Dimon got a 74% raise in 2013 despite “settling” for $13 billion despite “doing nothing wrong” (in case you missed it, you must read: Jamie Dimon’s Big $13 Billion Secret – The Truth Behind the JP Morgan Settlement).
Fast forward one year, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Och-Ziff is close to “settling.” From the WSJ:
U.S. authorities are investigating whether Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC knew that part of a $150 million investment in a small African miner would wind up in the hands of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s government, according to people familiar with the probe.
Och-Ziff last year disclosed that a broader Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigation is examining the $47 billion New York hedge fund’s business in Africa under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The act bars firms doing business in the U.S. from giving money or items of value to foreign officials for business, either directly or through intermediaries.
The publicly traded hedge-fund firm is in talks to settle the probe into its ties to a network of investors and deal makers that it worked with on business from Libya to South Africa, according to people familiar with the investigation. Och-Ziff and others have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into mining operations in the past decade as commodities prices soared.
Och-Ziff has denied that it knew some of the money would end up with the Zimbabwe government. Human-rights groups said the funds were used to carry out a violent crackdown on the opposition during a tough election Mr. Mugabe ultimately won in 2008.
U.S. investigators are scrutinizing a March 2008 trip to Zimbabwe taken by Och-Ziff’s Africa director at the time, Vanja Baros,according to people familiar with the investigation. The people said Mr. Baros met several people involved in channeling the money to the Mugabe government, including Billy Rautenbach, a Zimbabwean businessman with close ties to the dictator.
Mr. Rautenbach at the time of Camec’s move faced an arrest warrant in South Africa for alleged fraud, corruption and theft. In 2009, he pleaded guilty on behalf of a company he controlled to fraud charges and paid a fine of about $5 million.
“Fraud, corruption and theft. Eh, just pay a fine, no biggie!
In late 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department put Mr. Rautenbach on a list of what it called Mr. Mugabe’s “cronies” and said he “provided logistical support for large-scale mining projects in Zimbabwe that benefit a small number of corrupt senior officials.” The Treasury removed Mr. Rautenbach from the list in 2014; the agency said that after a review, Mr. Rautenbach no longer warranted inclusion.
Mr. Rautenbach met the Och-Ziff Africa director, Mr. Baros, in a mid-March 2008 gathering in Zimbabwe, along with a Camec executive and others, people familiar with the visit said. The trip was organized by Credit Suisse Group AG analysts who were optimistic about the company, these people said. The group visited a trucking operation used to service Camec’s Congolese mining projects and had dinner, the people said. They also visited the Congo and Mozambique, the people said.
Och-Ziff’s connection to the loan—disclosed in 2012 in the South African press—has raised concerns from at least one big investor.
In a September 2013 letter to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the biggest pension fund in the U.S. by assets known as Calpers and a onetime Och-Ziff investor that had questioned it about the Zimbabwe loan, the hedge-fund firm said it was a “passive shareholder of Camec” and that it “does not believe that any employee knew that Camec intended to provide funds raised from the offering to the regime of Robert Mugabe.”
A spokesman for Calpers, which last year shed its investments in hedge funds, including Och-Ziff, declined to comment.
In this case, it’s not just about theft and destroying the world economy. Giant financial firms can apparently just “settle” even when grotesque human rights abuses occur. This is how “justice” works in America.
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For related articles, see:
Bilderberg 2015 – Where Criminals Mingle with Politicians
The U.S. Department of Justice Handles Banker Criminals Like Juvenile Offenders…Literally


Hah ha ha ha ha ha
Whadda buncha fucking assholes!
Ackh! Not to worry, it's other people's money. Time for the public quarterings and disembowelings
"Insiders don't criticize insiders." And there you have it, folks.
It all starts with an email from an African nat'l looking for assistance to 'move' large sums of money off of the continent. Strange -- it usually goes much smoother than this. </sarc>
the civilized care not about the uncivilized. we dont have time.
I get emails for that ALL the time, which is why I'm gonna be richer than you! (any day now...)
LOL bad day for hedge funds
They served lion and baby elephant at Mugabe's 91st birthday party in February. But the Twitter mob didn't care one bit, only about the dentist.
next year : unborn gentile parts in a light piccata sauce, will be a big hit with the emerging mkt. hedge fund "mavens"
But his name was Cecil!
The PV club (Protected Victims) do not talk about one of their own. So while a Muslim girl is stoned to death for having pre marital sex, the feminists are nowhere to be found. It's hypocritical but at times makes for some interesting drama as when years ago, Black ministers in Seattle got into it with Microsoft over there benefits for gay partners. As is usually the case, MS made a large contribution to a community group in order to untangle itself from fighting between 2 PV groups. I was a 58 year old male fired and nobody cared. Hmmm,mm,
And meanwhile the "Pro Life" folks continue to look the other way as their "leaders" calmmor for dropping more bombs on innocent children abroad. And, we talk about "gun control" when we're waving flags as we bomb those children!
Another example of why they should be meeting their new rommate"Bubba'......
Hey that's racist!
Un-fucking-believable!!!!!
But if Putin backs bullies in the Ukraine...we will spend 10's of billions to undermine him. Let's see...why would Obama hate Putin and completely ignore Mugabe. hmm..
You're correct, except, it's neither really Putin's or Obama's call- it's their handlers' call. I'll concede that Putin looks a better leader, but most is by fortune of having a newly wiped credit score (following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the oligarchs getting their hands on the [scrap?] wealth).
Bankers are evil.
Any loan to a politician is a bribe until proven otherwise...period...
"What are these 'human rights' you speak of?"
Danny Och ... one of those "nice folks next door" - David Irving
Mugabe is as much a useful dictator as he is an enemy of the state.
It is all about, like all, how they cooperate.
I know people are really upset at that dentist killing Leo the Lion, or whatever commercial name they wish to give it.. butt..
Mugabe had a baby elephant cooked up, and ate it for his latest birthday,
and he's shipped a few to the Chinese, where theyhave been ripped apart from their mothers, and will spend their existence in a metal box being gauked at by Chinese...
I really don't think anyone care about big game in Africa, and the big money surely could care less.
Fiat-currency backed tyranny finances more tyranny.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
Zion, the masters of plunder and tyranny.
Mr. Mugabe ultimately "won" in 2008. - you forgot the quotations.
This coming from a country that uses witch craft as political slander.
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-20939-Mujuru+slams+Mugabe%E2%80%99s+sexual+fantasies/news.aspx
I'm way out of touch. Been at least 2 years since I updated my list of US-supported "good guy" dictators and "the next Hitler" dudes.
"Let the Justice Department and SEC investigate. Nothing meaningful will come out of it. Too many rich and powerful people got paid, and as Larry Summers so crudely admitted in 2009"
~ Same old shit, why waste any time printing this common tripe. WSJ must have had space to fill.
Rape & pilage it's the Banksters way of life!
Fuck the law...we are it!
Some Goy may be prosecuted.
See SAC, etc. for background.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
What does one call a bankster hanging from a tree? A pendulum.
When Justice uses the new laws that allow them to get the needed help from the NSA,you can be rest assured that if there's been one phone call or electronic transaction between anybody there,people that are trying to save their greedy-dumb asses will turn ratfink very quickly.
I heard the justice dept is looking at prosecuting Jon Corzine. Haha gotcha
You didn't hear? Next week, Mugabe is planning to seize the platinum mine from Camec, and sell it back to Anglo American.
That was pretty obvious... They should have seen that coming.