PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s wife, Grace, has demanded US$15 million compensation from the weekly Standard newspaper for defamation after the paper published WikiLeaks allegations that she was linked to diamond smuggling in the country.

Cables from the US embassy in Harare released by the whistleblower website claimed Grace Mugabe was among senior Zanu PF and government officials reaping massive profits from the smuggling of diamonds in the country.

However, Mugabe’s lawyer George Chikumbirike said the Standard report was false, scandalous, malicious and bent on damaging her reputation.

In summons filed at the Harare High Court on Wednesday, Chikumbirike said The Standard newspaper wrongly suggested that Mugabe “used her position as the First Lady to access diamonds clandestinely, enriching herself in circumstances in which the country was facing serious foreign currency shortages, which amounts should have been channeled to the fiscus".

Chikumbirike said the newspaper had badly damaged Mugabe’s status.

"The Plaintiff is of high standing in Zimbabwe. She is well regarded internationally. Further she is the wife of His Excellency the President of Zimbabwe.

“The imputation of such conduct on a person of such high standing, the mother of the nation, is to lower the respect with which she is held by all right thinking persons, to a point of disappearance," the papers read.

The classified cables implicating Mugabe were written by former US ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, in November 2008 who was apparently informed of the alleged deals by African Consolidated Resources (ACR) chief executive Andrew Cranswick.

But when the cable was released, Cranswick claimed he had not given any of the names published by the WikiLeaks adding that he had “never met any US officials”.