HARARE – The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has unfrozen assets belonging to Uebert Angel, Simon Rudland, Ewan McMillan, and Kamlesh Pattni claiming it has failed to find any evidence linking them to gold smuggling and money laundering allegations contained in an Al Jazeera documentary aired last month.

Zimbabwean authorities were at a loss on how to react when the Qatar based news network last month splashed the name-dropping individuals in its corruption busting documentary entitled “Gold Mafia”.

In the documentary, the individuals were filmed by undercover Al Jazeera journalists who posed as criminals seeking to use their networks to smuggle gold and cash.

They fell for the bait, in the process gleefully spewing a lot of information on how they cheat security systems to smuggle the pricey contraband.

Under pressure to take action, government, through the RBZ’s FIU announced it had frozen their assets pending an investigation into the alleged crimes.

The decision to free the suspects’ assets was announced in a Monday statement by Oliver Chiperesa, Director General of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).

“The FIU, working in close collaboration with law enforcement agencies, has since concluded its analysis of the four episodes of the Al Jazeera documentary and has also analyzed the financial assets and transactions of the persons implicated in the documentary and has determined that there is no good cause for the freezing order to remain in place.

“The FIU has not identified transactions/assets linked to money laundering and related financial crime connected to the allegations in the Al Jazeera documentary.

“In view of the above, the FIU has directed financial institutions to unfreeze all the accounts and other financial assets that had been frozen pursuant to the directive of 31 March 2023,” said Chiperesa.

He added, “The unfreezing action is without prejudice to any further investigations that law enforcement agencies may wish to commence or continue against any of the persons involved.

“Some of the allegations in the documentary relate to money laundering and financial crimes alleged to have taken place outside Zimbabwe’s borders.

“The FIU, if so requested, stands ready and is indeed mandated to cooperate with any international investigations against any of the persons or entities mentioned in the documentary.”

Ironically, Chiperesa’s statement inviting other arms of government to investigate the money laundering allegations followed after speaker of parliament Jacob Mudenda barred national assembly committees from investigating the allegations.

Mudenda ordered the chairpersons for the public accounts committee and budget, Finance and Economic Development, B Dube and Mathew Nyashanu, respectively, to leave the investigations to the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and the police.

The unfreezing of the assets of the Gold Mafia suspects generated popular uproar, with many thinking that the government had pulled another ‘catch and release’ trick out of its sleeve.