Revealed: Thatcher's pot of gold, assets frozen

[emad]

Sunday Times
The Insight team



THE RED and white painted sign on the dust-bowl highway from Masvingo, central Zimbabwe, said simply “Redwork”. Pointing down a side road to a stone-built mill, it held the answer to a modern mystery: the source of Sir Mark Thatcher’s gold. Thatcher’s business affairs have been the subject of rumours for years with little hard fact. Last week, however, The Sunday Times was directed to the Redwork mill, near the small town of Zvishavane. Fed by a series of surrounding open-cast mines, the mill processes 13lb of gold a month, bringing in estimated profits of £1.2m per year.

Until recently Thatcher was co-owner of the mill with Graham Lorimer, a New Zealand rally driver who is his close friend and business partner. But the mill was confiscated by the area’s mining commissioner four weeks ago after the Zimbabwean police’s “Gold Squad” began investigating it for alleged smuggling. Lorimer has fled the country and is resisting requests to return for questioning, fearing he will not be given a fair hearing.

The involvement in the mill and the revelations about the millions Thatcher is making from selling diesel under President Robert Mugabe’s oppressive regime will plunge him into new controversy. The disclosures come as the son of Baroness Thatcher, the former Tory prime minister, faces a fresh court hearing next week over his alleged role in the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. Since moving to Africa nine years ago, the 51-year-old Thatcher is said to have amassed a personal fortune in a series of shrewd deals. Having left Harrow with few qualifications, his business empire was launched on the proceeds of commission payments for his role in the Al-Yamamah arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia, which was negotiated in 1986 when his mother was at No 10.

He did not invest the proceeds wisely at first. He became a partner in Emergency Networks, a Texas-based firm that installed security alarms. But the venture collapsed in 1994, leaving a string of debts. A year later he settled in Cape Town and started to pursue new ventures. One was a scheme to sell loans to the city’s police officers. It became mired in scandal in the late 1990s when it emerged that he was hiring moonlighting police officers to act as debt collectors against their colleagues. But this was not the source of his fortune. It has now emerged that Thatcher was substantially involved in two business concessions controlled by Mugabe’s government. One is a diesel depot near the South African border and the other is Redwork mill. The mill is in a mineral-rich area about 60 miles west of Masvingo, capital of the central province. Redwork takes the ore from the surrounding mines and refines it into gold. The company employs 18 staff who live in modest quarters close to the mill’s stone offices. Last week Armardo Dube, the foreman, was supervising the mill during its temporary closure. “It is hard work for little money . . . but the wages here are better than at some of the other mines,” he said.
More:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1257704_1,00.html
(pay site)

[emad]

1. Bulk diesel depot on the Limpopo making $$$$$$$$$$

Sources close to Thatcher have also revealed that he went to Zimbabwe earlier this year to check on his other lucrative business. He has invested in a bulk diesel depot at Beitbridge, near the Limpopo river on the border with South Africa.

The depot has a government licence to sell discounted diesel to big haulage firms. Former workers allege the depot sells between 1m and 2m litres a month generating profits of between £3m and £6m a year. One insider said: “He’s making millions from it.”


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1257704_2,00.html