Core Mining and Mineral Resources director Lovemore Kurotwi has written to the Clerk of Parliament seeking to enlighten the august house on the events leading to the liquidation of Canadile Miners and subsequent arrest of its directors.
Kurotwi is one of the diamond firm’s bosses arrested alongside Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) officials after Mines and Mining Development minister Obert Mpofu alleged they acted in cahoots and submitted a favourable due diligent report recommending ZMDC to form a joint venture with Core Mining.
As a result, Core Mining and Marange Resources formed Canadile Miners which was granted mining rights in Marange area where they mined diamonds and allegedly defrauded ZMDC and government of diamonds worth over $2 billion.
Sources said submissions by Kurotwi were expected to be used to compile a report on Marange diamonds by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development.
In a seven-page document dated October 20, Kurotwi said: “The minister in this case (Obert Mpofu) clearly seems to run roughshod all over what is meant to be an independent pillar of State, ie the Judiciary,” Kurotwi wrote.
“All I am saying is that if anybody, myself included, is suspected of any nefarious practices either individually or as a business, due legal process must be followed and justice must be seen to be done without fear or favour, unlike the situation we are here faced with where the minister clearly seems to commandeer the wheels of justice to do as he commands.”
Kurotwi said the minister arbitrarily wound up Canadile Miners and its activities in Chiadzwa and declared all Canadile investors personae non gratae and banned them from entering Zimbabwe.
“He did all this with impunity and without any recourse to any due legal process (and) after arbitrarily winding up Canadile Miners, he then took the matter to the courts. Are the courts now supposed to merely rubberstamp the action of liquidating a mining activity without following due legal process?” he asked.
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Kurotwi said the office of the Attorney-General was supposed to be an independent advisor of the government, but in this case the latter was allegedly bulldozed by the minister.
