Grace linked to ivory poaching

DOCUMENTS SHOW BLACK MARKET SALES AFTER 400 ZIM ELEPHANTS WERE POISONED

Zimbabwean police are investigating former president Robert Mugabe’s wife, Grace, who is accused of smuggling ivory worth millions to underground foreign markets, a stateowned weekly reported yesterday.

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 spokesperson Charity Charamba confirmed receiving a report, but declined to elaborate.

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 newspaper 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 it.”

The newspaper said police may question the former first lady soon. Grace Mugabe earned the sobriquet “Gucci Grace” for her lavish lifestyle during the time her husband was president.

Zimbabwe has seen 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 in 2017. “Poaching levels have dropped sharply in Hwange because the market has been disturbed,” the Sunday Mail quoted him as saying. – AFP