HARARE – Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) MP Charlton Hwende Wednesday cheekily quizzed Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa if it was government policy for Zimbabwe’s top diplomat Uebert Angel to demand facilitation fees from investors wishing to meet President Emmerson Mnangagwa to pitch their proposals.
Angel is in the eye of the storm after he was secretly filmed and later splashed in an Al Jazeera documentary offering to use his diplomatic bag to smuggle loads of cash into Zimbabwe on behalf of the Qatar based news network’s journalists who posed as criminals.
Appointed ambassador at large and presidential envoy by Mnangagwa in 2021, Angel is seen in the documentary demanding US$200,000 for him to facilitate a meeting with the president.
Hwende took the matter to parliament’s ministers’ question time Wednesday.
In a question he intended to direct to the Foreign Affairs minister but responded to by the leader of government business on the day, the Kuwadzana East lawmaker sought an answer on weather it was within the under-fire diplomat’s brief to demand facilitation fees for a meeting with the head of state.
“What is government policy with regards to ambassadors who charge fees to people for facilitating meeting the President when those people are supposed to bring investment to this country?
“I did not want to mention Uebert Angels’ name because it would become specific but he is the ambassador who is charging US$200,000,” asked Hwende.
In response, Mutsvangwa evaded the question and chose to outline the general responsibilities of ambassadors.
“I was an Ambassador for a long time,” she said.
“An ambassador represents the needs of his or her country in accordance with the mandate that you are given by the President of your country; to put your country on the map and make sure that there is trade or export and make sure that there are good relations between the two countries.”
The United Kingdom based preacher has done little to dispel the claims except to say that he deliberately tried to “play along” while trying to establish the real intentions of what he had suspected to be bizarre motives of what he had all along known to be investors who were seeking to cut corners.
