CIOGATE: Mandaza muzzled by Mirror's CIO owners

CIOGATE: Mandaza muzzled by Mirror's CIO owners

MANDAZA: Sources say he has lost editorial control at the Mirror

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By Staff Reporter

MIRROR Newspapers Group publisher Ibbo Mandaza has had several attempt to rubbish reports that the newspapers have been taken over by the Central Intelligence Organisation shot down, in further proof of who calls the shots, sources said.

The Zimbabwe Independent newspaper sparked a media scrum on Friday last week when it exposed how Zimbabwe's intelligence services were buying into newspapers in what is now referred to as the CIOGATE Scandal.

The Independent said the Financial Gazette newspaper had been taken over 100 percent by the CIO, while Mandaza had ceded 70 percent of his stake in the Mirror Group to a group of CIO investors with a huge budget sustained by public funds.

Sources told New Zimbabwe.com Thursday that Mandaza reacted to the Independent's expose` on Friday last week, and his response should have appeared in the Daily Mirror on Saturday but was mysteriously left out.

Further efforts to get Mandaza's reaction in the paper were frustrated in the Sunday Mirror on Sunday.

A source close to the developments said: "Mandaza's response should have been published on Saturday, but the majority shareholders whom we all now know, were a little bit slow off the blocks and were going through their consultations with their superiors.

"The trouble is that Mandaza now wants to deny something that he has been complaining loudly about. He mentions it all the time when he has had one too many. In fact, there is now a strong feeling at CIO headquarters that he in fact is the Independent's source, and they are treating him with extreme distrust at the moment."

Meanwhile the Financial Gazette trotted out an angry excuse on Thursday, but was quiet on who its owners were. Instead, the paper's editor focused on accusing the Independent of commercial jealousy.

"We do not owe our colleagues at the Zimbabwe Indpendent any explanation as to who our owners are," Sunsleey Chamunorwa wrote. "Suffice to inform and confirm to our readers that the Financial Gazette is owned solidly by a group of individuals with impeccable financial, commercial and business credentials."

Chamunorwa, apparently referring to Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono, goes on to describe, rather than name, the paper's majority shareholder as a "prominent banker, Zimbabwe's best turnaround expert, farmer and businessman."

The Independent's story last week said Gono was a mere front for Angolan-style media investments by the intelligence services.

The Financial Gazette take-over came after the paper's former editor, Francis Mdlongwa, led a consortium and borrowed a loan from the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe when Gono was still chief executive. Mdlongwa's consortium successfully bought the Financial Gazette but came under pressure from Gono to tone down criticism of goverment. When this didn't happen, Gono applied pressure by recalling the loan.

At almost the same time, Mdlongwa said this week, two new "unknowns" came through promising to reduce interest payable to the bank and dangling $15 million investment packages each. The two new partners both secured directorships. Bit by bit, he said, the new comers squeezed the original owners out and Mdlongwa eventually resigned.

Mdlongwa said this week: "Looking back with hindsight, it is difficult to rule out that there could have been other forces behind it all, but we simply did not have evidence."

The Mirror's take-over was easy, wrote the Independent's news editor Dumisani Muleya, because the paper owed the Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe huge sums at a time.

The Independent said the CIO was paying 83% of the Mirror's costs, a development which media analysts say explains why the Mirror titles are never in financial trouble despite poor advertising revenues and unimpressive sales.

Sources say National Security Minister Didymus Mutasa and CIO bosses were meeting throughout this week to limit the damage.

Meanwhile Muleya, who broke the CIOGATE Scandal, flew out to South Africa on Tuesday this week, according to colleagues at the Independent. Friends fear he may be arrested and quizzed about his source by the CIO.
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