Mnangagwa's connections - Lebanese diamond dealer, Iraqi arms dealer in the Congo

This is part 2 of how Emmerson Mnangagwa used the army to enrich himself, Grace Mugabe and those close to them. Various reports used in this story link Mnangagwa to a Lebanese diamond dealer, an Iraqi arms dealer and corrupt Congolese mine owners. They smuggled huge sums of money across the globe. Some was used on the black market in Zimbabwe at the height of inflation.
 
The report also says Mnangagwa and his associates use planes that belong to Avient, a company owned by ZANU-PF treasurer and close Mugabe associate J.C. Joshi.

Avient also supplied the Congolese army with aircraft and by so doing, there were no questions asked concerning the illicit deals that were done.

"The procedure was quite straightfoward," the report quotes a source. "We'd meet with a guy called Alphonse in Kinshasa, a Belgian diamond dealer, and we gave him US dollars for uncut stones that had been extracted from JFPI Corporation mines in the Congo's big diamond area Mbuji-Mayi.

"Then we'd go back to Harare with the diamonds and from there we'd take them down to South Africa to have them cut. That was the tricky part."

The source is also quoted saying that a couple of individuals employed by Shanfari smuggled the diamonds to Johannesburg in their underpants. 

"Enough diamonds to fill a tea cup," the source says. "Easily half a million to a million US worth on each trip. Once the stones had made it through Johannesburg airport the rest was easy.

"We got the diamonds back into Harare - never a problem because we had the infrastructure of the military to assist us and of course carte blanche in the airport itself. From there the diamonds, certified as if they had been extracted legally from a mine owned by Oryx, travelled on to Antwerp where they were sold legally.

"The people who put the money into the system in the first place got the same amount back, but now certified by the Antwerp diamond buyer as having clean provenance. It was pure money-laundering. Everybody was happy. Thamer's Arab friends had achieved their objectives. Thamer took a big cut. Emmerson and the others made easy money."

"Sometimes, though, Shanfari tried to get a little too clever, according to sources. It worked beautifully, until the day that it didn't," the report further quotes the source.

According to the report, the US dollars would be taken from Harare to Kinshasa not to buy diamonds but to be exchanged into Congolese Francs by Shanfari's associate named as Akram Moorad - a nephew of the Lebanese diamond dealer who supplied cash to many underworld dealers across the globe. 

"Thamer called the Congolese Francs 'chicken feed'," recalled Ali. "There was tons of the stuff, loaded inside big silver containers, that we'd take back to Harare. Later, in the dead of night, we'd load the boxes onto a Libyan plane - a private plane from Tripoli, at Harare airport which would take the money to Kisangani, which was a provincial office of JFPI Corporation as well as the heart of rebel country in the Congo war. Here they desperately needed Congolese Francs."