Raymond Zarurai
Zimbabwe’s popular business mogul, Kudakwashe Tagwirei was on July 22 included in a list of sanctioned people by the UK government under the Global Anti-Corruption sanctions regime.
Announcing the sanctions, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the action was targeting individuals who had chosen to ‘line’ their own pockets at the expense of citizens.
“The UK is committed to fighting blight of corruption and holding those responsible for its corrosive effect to account. Corruption drains the wealth of poorer nations, keeps their people trapped in poverty and poisons the well of democracy,” he said.
The new sanctions targeted five individuals from Zimbabwe, Iraq, Equatorial Guinea and Venezuela.
According to the statement, Tagwirei was designated ‘for profiting from misappropriation of property when his company, Sakunda Holdings, redeemed Government of Zimbabwe Treasury Bills at up to ten times their official value. His actions accelerated the devaluation of Zimbabwe’s currency, increasing prices of essentials, such as food, for Zimbabwean citizens.”
It further states that ‘both Sakunda and Tagwirei as its CEO and owner, profited significantly from the misappropriation of property at the expense of wider microeconomic stability in Zimbabwe, in one of the most serious incidences of corruption under the current government.’
Weighing in on the issue, UK ambassador to Zimbabwe, Melanie Robinson said, “Corruption harms ordinary people which is why the UK imposed an asset freeze and travel ban on Kudakwashe Tagwirei. I look forward to seeing the Zimbabwean government putting its commitment to fight corruption into action.”
In a move that suggests the UK and the United States of America invested interests in to control and ‘protect the global financial system’, the USA announced its welcome of the UK sanctions against the five individuals, with four of them already on the US sanctions list, including Tagwirei.
Tagwirei joins other 4 individuals who are on the UK’s sanctions list in 2021, including Owen Ncube, Isaac Moyo, Godwin Matanga and Anselem Sanyatwe who were sanctioned earlier this year in February for allegedly violating human rights in Zimbabwe.
The Zimbabwean government has on various platforms called for the removal of sanctions with the support of the regional bloc, SADC.
Earlier this month, President Emmerson Mnangagwa was on record saying, “As far as Zimbabwe is concerned, under the current economic environment we are living in over two decades of sanctions imposed by the big boys. Zimbabwe is surviving on the basis of three issues; attending to our domestic resources to survive, secondly, the support we receive in our region as SADC, both at the economic and political level and thirdly under the auspices of the AU.”
