JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Controversial arms dealer and Zimbabwe’s honorary consul to Belarus Alyaksandr (Alexander) Zingman has been arrested in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Zingman, a friend of Zimbabwe’s president Emmerson Mnangagwa, was detained on March 17 following a meeting with former DRC president Joseph Kabila.
Also detained with him are AFTRADE director Aleh Vodchyts and Italian businessman Paolo Persico, according to EuroRadio.
Zingman reportedly met Kabila in Lusaka before flying to second city Lubumbashi in south-eastern DRC on the border with Zambia where he met some business associates.
South Africa’s Daily Maverick reports that Zingman, a dual United States and Belarus citizen, was questioned over the purpose of his trip to the DRC but “could not explain.” His detention has led to “intense diplomatic activity”, the Maverick reported, adding that the governments of the United Arab Emirates and Zimbabwe were both applying pressure for his release.
The Maverick, citing sources, reports that Zingman “offered to sell weapons to the former president” who has fallen out with his successor President Felix Tshisekedi, but “there was no evidence that Kabila invited the meeting or agreed to any arms deals.”
According to an AFTRADE spokesman, Zingman was about to get on a plane heading to Harare when plain clothes police grabbed him. A video of the incident posted on YouTube shows the businessman briefly trying to resist his detention, before being pushed and dragged away.
“Mr Zingman held meetings with local partners in the city of Lubumbashi. At the end of the meeting, when he arrived at the airport and was about to leave for Harare, his passport was seized,” a spokesman for AFTRADE DMCC, a dealer selling Belarusian machines in Africa, said.
“He was placed in a room with two colleagues of him for several hours – there one could not sit down, they were not provided with water, they did not have any opportunity to contact with the outside world.”
Zingman is a close associate of Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka. He has also been photographed in the company of Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa and Zambia’s Edgar Lungu.
Mnangagwa named Zingman as Zimbabwe’s honorary consul in Belarus in 2019, and the businessman is believed to be behind deals which have seen Zimbabwe import agricultural machines and buses worth tens of millions of dollars.
Zingman threatened to sue the investigative Zambian newspaper Digger News in 2020 after it published pictures of him meeting at the Zambian Embassy in Moscow with President Lungu and the top brass of the Zambian military including Defence Permanent Secretary Sturdy Mwale, and Zambia Air Force Commander Lieutenant-General David Muma in 2016.
The newspaper reported that Zingman brokered a meeting between President Vladmir Putin and Lungu and Alexander Mikheev, president of Rosoboronexport, the Russian state-owned arms company. In July 2017, Zambia purchased five Sukhoi jets from Russia.
