Staff Reporter

FORMER finance minister, Tendai Biti has accused Zanu PF ministers of being so corrupt to the extent that they have grown as fat as pigs he rears at his rural Murewa home.

Addressing MDC Alliance supporters during a campaign rally last weekend in Tafara, Harare, Biti described the Zanu PF leaders as grand thieves who had grown fat as pigs due to the looting of the country’s natural resources.

“Zanu PF politicians are now like the pigs that I rear in Murewa because of the high level of theft of the country’s resources that they are involved in,” said Biti.

“When I was the minister of finance, I used to take reports from the Global Witness and Kimberly Process diamond certifiers to the then president Robert Mugabe on how diamonds were being looted by his ministers, but he did not believe me,” he added.

Biti told the MDC Alliance gathering that he was at one time forced to create a secret and secure email where his sources would email him reports on the looting going on in Chiadzwa because the sources did not trust the Zanu PF ministers who were involved in Chiadzwa.

He identified one of his sources as Abbey Chikane, a South African and Kimberly Process monitor. 

In 2016, Mugabe announced that at least $15 billion worth of diamonds were looted in Marange.

“In the emails, my sources would tell me that one of the looters was Mpofu.  At the end $15 billion was looted and no one has been prosecuted to this day,” Biti said in clear reference to Obert Mpofu, who was then the mines minister.  Mpofu is now the home affairs minister.

However, Mpofu has in the past dismissed the claims and blamed mining giant De Beers for looting “tonnes” of diamonds from Marange over a period of 15 years.

Between 2009 and 2013, Biti was the finance minister during the inclusive government and used to constantly call for transparency in the mining and marketing of the diamonds.