Belarusian Businessmen With Controversial History Elsewhere Break Into Ruto’s Machine

Curiously, the Dubai-based company has also disclosed that its assessment is that the task at hand will cost a mere $5 million a paltry amount when compared to the $320 million-budget projected by AFC as scope of the project.

“We will look for machinery and equipment that meets the needs and then take it a step further by setting up offshore concessionary Exim-like loan arrangements to make it possible to purchase these technologies,” said the Dubai-based entity in a letter of introduction to Sheuko.

Under the plan, billions worth of machines and tractors imported will be dumped on four government entities – Kenya Prison Service, National Youth Service, Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation and the Agricultural Development Corporation.

The Cabinet memo asked the Executive to direct the National Treasury and AFC to commence negotiations with the Dubai-based entity and procure the equipment.

The memo also sought Cabinet approval for the appointment of AFC as the implementing agent for the government of Kenya on the project, to mandate the agency to begin negotiations with Afritrade DMCC and to treat the Dubai-based company as official agents of the government of Belarus.

Belarus has only recently been rated as a sovereign in “selective default” and “default” by the global rating agency, S&P. This means no advanced country, commercial bank or listed entity answerable to shareholders can have financial dealings with any counterparty or entity from the country.

Zingman shady dealings in Africa

Zingman and his company AFTRADE are engaged in the sale of Belarusian equipment manufactured by Amkodor, Minsk Tractor Plant, MAZ, and others to African countries. In this market, he works in parallel with Aliaksandr Zaitsau, a long-term partner of Aliaksei Aleksin, and Mikalai Varabei. All of them are called ’Lukashenka’s wallets.’

In March 2018, Belarus’ autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko dispatched his right-hand man Viktor Sheiman to Zimbabwe to negotiate trade and business deals on the government’s behalf.

Sheiman has been one of Lukashenko’s closest allies ever since the 1994 electoral campaign that brought the strongman to power. While serving as Belarus’ prosecutor general in 2004, he was sanctioned by the EU over the disappearance of several prominent Lukashenko critics, and the U.S. followed suit two years later.

Viktor Sheiman.

But he was under no such restrictions in Zimbabwe. After Sheiman returned from Harare, Belarus’s state-owned news agency said he had met with Zimbabwean officials to discuss “expanding economic cooperation” between the two countries, and that he had brokered an opportunity for “the creation of a mining enterprise.”

Sheiman told Belarusian state television that the trip had produced deals to explore for minerals such as gold, platinum, and rare earths through a joint venture in mining.

The mining deal was presented as a collaboration between the two countries, and Sheiman said it was intended to make “profit for Belarus.” But in fact, the new joint venture, Zim Goldfields, was secretly co-owned by Sheiman’s son, Sergei, with no stake for the Belarusian state.

Sergei Sheiman’s partner in the gold venture was influential Belarusian businessman Alexander Zingman, who has served as Zimbabwe’s honorary consul in Belarus since around early 2019.

Documents from the Pandora Papers — a massive leak to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists of nearly 12 million documents from 14 offshore corporate service providers, shared with media partners around the world — show how the two Belarusians used shell companies in the Seychelles and the U.K. to mask their involvement and the conflict of interest at the heart of the deal.

Thirty percent of Zim Goldfields was held by Zimbabwe’s state-owned mining company, the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC), but the other 70 percent was controlled by a U.K. shell company called Midlands Goldfields Limited.

Its ownership was masked by a proxy — U.K. records name Robert Michael Friedberg as the director of the company — but leaked documents from the Pandora Papers show that Friedberg was acting on behalf of its owners as a nominee for a Seychelles entity with a similar name: Midlands Goldfields Foundation. And that entity was owned by Sergei Sheiman and Zingman, who had both reportedly been part of the March 2018 mission to Harare.

Both shell companies appear to have been created specifically to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by Viktor Sheiman’s official visit to Zimbabwe: Midlands Goldfields in both the Seychelles and U.K. were incorporated just a few months before his trip, and Zim Goldfields was set up shortly after.

Zim Goldfields obtained permits to prospect for gold on nearly 55,000 hectares in three locations, including a site along the Mutare River, a waterway in eastern Zimbabwe whose name means “river of metals.” The company was awarded a five-year “special grant” in May 2018 to mine for gold in a section of the river.

Within months, the company was in trouble with Zimbabwean authorities. A December 2018 visit to the Zim Goldfields site, led by the Mines Ministry’s provincial leadership in Manicaland, reported the company had violated several safety regulations.