Mines bill to deal with organized crime in mining
The amendment of the Mines and Minerals Act will deal with organized cartels that have been involved in illicit financial flow and smuggling of minerals from the country, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development Hon Edmond Mkaratigwa has said.
Rudairo Mapuranga
The sentiments have come after Executive Director of the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG-Zimbabwe) Mr Farai Maguwu said the government was losing close to US$20 billion due to organized crime in the mining sector.
Maguwu said smuggling levels in Zimbabwe had escalated in 2022 as compared to 2008 where the then governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Dr Gideon Gono said the country was losing $14.4 billion annually to diamond smuggling alone back in 2008.
“If mineral smuggling was a problem in 2008, it has reached pandemic levels in 2022,” Maguwu said.
There have been reports that the diamond and gold sectors have been captured by organized criminal cartels, most of whom use airplanes to smuggle the minerals from the country. Reports have indicated that there is a criminal syndicate called IE&C which smuggle diamonds to South Africa for onward exportation to Britain.
In 2003 retired businessman Ian Macmillan, his son Ewan, pilot Clair Burdett and mining director Collin Rose appeared in court accused of smuggling about $68-million (about R436-million) of gold to SA through a “well-organised” crime syndicate. They were accused of smuggling almost 7 500kg of gold through a crime syndicate called IE&C.
Hon Mkaratigwa said the Mines bill was going to deal with informal mining as informal miners have been accused of selling their productions to the informal market.
“Definitely these criminals are organised and what we are doing as Parliament is to unclog as much as possible, all potential loopholes. At law, the Bill seeks to achieve that through reducing informal mining operations as much as possible. Informal mining is a choice but to some it has been just an alternative due to de-motivations against the formal system. That is why legally, we are working on unblocking that,” Hon Mkaratigwa said.
The Chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development also said that the government was going to deal with institutional loopholes that allowed cartels to loot and smuggle the country’s minerals.
“On the other hand, there are institutional loopholes which we can call technological solutions and requisite expertise as well as adequate human resourcing, which can tackle that. These issues are critical at our territorial gateways where these precious minerals are mostly passing unnoticed. We have also advanced aspects related to training of personnel involved in mineral handling at all levels in the country, so that they are capable of identifying these resources and make it easy to also reduce their illegal movement among and through the population. In that respect we have made an inquiry into that, and identified gaps we have recommended to the government for implementation, and we are following up on that, while the other report that is almost ready, contains further recommended solutions in that respect.
“Another problem we identified was on intergovernmental institutions interoperability and there, we have identified gaps. There are limited synergies as the agencies have been working within a silo mentality with less cooperation. As a result, skills with one department have not been benefitting the whole but departmentally, at operational level. We have recommended redress against such,” he said.
Mkaratigwa said Parliament has been working flat out to see that the problem of mineral leakages has been dealt with once and for all with different stakeholder consultations done to achieve a crime free mining sector.
“A lot has been happening, but the bottom line is what the government sought to achieve through NDS1, which are overall the best conditions for business, be it small or big. We have also used various means to that end and enforcement of existing legislation is also key. Parliament has often called the various government departments to account in that regard and through different tactics, we have harnessed existing efforts towards the benefit of our great country.” Mkaratigwa said.