The star state witness in the treason trial of Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has a trail of broken contracts and legal battles that include abortive grain “deals” with two African countries.
According to an investigative documentary screened by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 2001, Ari ben Menashe was accused of taking $2,6-million for maize from the Zambian government without supplying “an ounce” of grain.
And it emerged this week that South Africa’s Nedbank was caught up in the Zambian maize debacle.
The bank confirmed it had extended finance to the purchaser of the maize, which was never delivered by Ben Menashe’s company. In 2001 it assisted the principal in winning a claim in the London International Court of Arbitration.
In the Harare High Court this week, South African advocate George Bizos described Ben Menashe as “an internationally renowned crook”.
“Ari ben Menashe and [Menashe’s partner] Alex Legault have well-publicised and documented general reputations for dishonesty, fraudulent conduct and, in the case of Legault, being a fugitive from justice,” said Bizos, who is representing Tsvangirai and his two fellow-accused, Movement for Democratic (MDC) Change secretary general Welshman Ncube and shadow agriculture minister Renson Gasela.
Ben Menashe (51) has alleged Tsvangirai asked him to help assassinate President Robert Mugabe.
Last May United States public relations firm O’Dwyer PR Daily said Mugabe’s government had paid Ben Menashe $400 000 to revamp and promote its battered image abroad. The deal included a $20 000 bonus to be paid at the end of the year if “pariah state label currently being attached to Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe government” had disappeared.
He claimed in court this week he had only won the government contract after his encounter with Tsvangirai.
Ben Menashe and Legault, his partner in a Canadian-based political consultancy, Dickens and Madsen, have come under the close scrutiny of the Canadian media.
Journalists there are especially interested in how Legault has managed to stave off deportation for more than 18 years, despite being wanted for separate frauds in the US states of Florida, Louisiana and Texas. In two cases, the charges relate to the taking of money for goods that were not supplied.
Legault, a US citizen also known as Walter Barr and Paul Dietrich, was also due to have testified for the prosecution in the Tsvangirai trial. He abruptly withdrew as a witness.
The documentary, for the CBC’s Disclosure programme, turns a searching light on broking and consultancy firm Carlington Sales, set up by Ben Menashe and Legault in Montreal in 1994. This, Disclosure said, “has been the target of several lawsuits that accuse the company of taking funds but not delivering commodities that were ordered”.
“A Czech company says Carlington kept $366 000 and didn’t deliver any butter,” the programme said.
“An Estonian firm paid $147 000 for wheat, an Armenian company $150 000 for wheat, and a company acting for Ghana paid $262 000 for rice that never arrived.”
A former Carlington Sales employee, Olivier Damiron, told Disclosure “he saw no evidence that any of the commodities was delivered … it’s just a scam basically, take the 10% [down payment] and run”.
“Small African countries are a perfect target … they see this man with lots of money who comes in and offers them a great deal on grain, so they sign the contract, send the money and then they wait. And then nothing happens.”
Research for the documentary revealed that in March 2001 British-based Merchant International Limited sued Carlington Sales, claiming it had contracted Carlington to ship rice from Myanmar to Ghana for $2,6-million and paid a 10% deposit up front. The rice never arrived.
Damiron filed an affidavit on Merchant’s behalf saying Carlington never had any intention of shipping the rice and that the deal was part of a long pattern in which Carlington defrauded foreign governments and companies.
He also stated that when Ghana’s brokers demanded to see a sample of the rice, Ben Menashe sent him to a local grocery store to buy rice off the shelf and ship it out in a plastic bag. Carlington denied this.
The case was settled out of court. Ben Menashe told a Disclosure reporter it was “a simple case of a deal gone bad … He got his money back even though we didn’t have to give back the money”.
He hotly denied telling Merchant the deal was guaranteed by the Canadian government, as stated by the company in a court affidavit. He suggested Dameron was disgruntled after being fired from Carlington.
Zambia was the scene of the most widely reported commercial scandal involving Ben Menashe, described by Zambian MP Dipak Patel as “the Carlington maize scam”.
Disclosure was told by a prominent former Zambian banker, Rajan Mahtani, that Ben Menashe undertook to supply $21-million of maize to drought-stricken Zambia in 1997, claiming “some sort of export guarantee” from the Canadian authorities.
Mahtani told Disclosure Carlington received $2,6-million for maize, but that “until this date, not a single ounce of maize has arrived” in Zambia.
Carlington’s reply, Disclosure said, was that “it had used the money for other services provided to the Zambian government”.
South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Aziz Pahad, has said Zimbabwean law should be allowed to take its course, and that it would be premature to dismiss the charges against Tsvangirai as bogus.