The Zimbabwe government has dismissed press reports that British property tycoon Nicholas van Hoogstraten lent President Robert Mugabe $10-million last year, the state-controlled Herald reported on Friday.
Van Hoogstraten was quoted in the Sunday Times of London last week as saying he lent Mugabe the money in November, when Zimbabwe was facing a severe cash crunch. Security for the credit was in assets worth trillions of Zimbabwean dollars, the paper reported.
But Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba said the claim was ”cheap propaganda and a vain attempt to besmirch” the president, the Herald said.
Zimbabwe’s president is ”neither a borrower nor a lender”, Charamba told the paper.
”Robert Mugabe has no relationship with any tycoon, let alone of British stock,” he added.
The spokesperson was scornful of Van Hoogstraten’s claims that Mugabe was ”a true English gentleman”.
”That’s a creation of the British and their crazy media and they are free to attach any character to their creation. I speak for Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe whom the British can never consider their mirror image,” the president’s spokesperson said.
Charamba challenged the Sunday Times to produce details of the transaction.
Van Hoogstraten, who is believed to own property in Zimbabwe, is one of Britain’s most notorious businessmen. He was given a 10-year jail sentence in 2002 for being behind the murder of a business rival, Mohammed Raja, but got off on appeal. Britain’s civil courts have since declared him a murderer.
The British tycoon told the Sunday Times the $10-million — enough to meet Zimbabwe’s power imports for at least two weeks — had been loaned to Mugabe through Messina Investments, a company Van Hoogstraten says is owned by his children. He said the interest on Mugabe’s loan was due in June. — Sapa-dpa