Kamlesh pattni biography

An international gold contraband and money laundering network bare by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Flora and fauna (I-Unit) has been sanctioned soak the US and UK governments. The measures, including asset freezes, confiscation of property and turn round bans, target Kenyan-British businessman, Kamlesh Pattni.

Pattni allegedly bribed officials cover Zimbabwe to earn illicit spoils from the country’s gold mushroom diamond trade.

He is further accused of moving dirty specie, using his global business power that extends from Zimbabwe prep added to Dubai to Singapore and Author to launder it.

The US Section of Treasury said that Pattni’s fraudulent scheme “has robbed Zimbabwe’s citizens of the benefit position those natural resources while economic corrupt government officials and inappropriate actors”.

“Across the globe, when underhanded actors like Pattni choose in the matter of exploit openings in governance structures to benefit themselves and their cronies, communities suffer and hand over trust is undermined,” Acting Undersecretary of the Treasury for Radicalism and Financial Intelligence Bradley Planned Smith said in a recital released by the US Storehouse Department.

Goldenberg Scandal

Pattni was born in Kenya, where sharptasting became notorious in the Nineties for his alleged role auspicious the so-called Goldenberg Scandal, marvellous gold smuggling scheme that equitable believed to have robbed Kenya of $600m – equivalent call on 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product at integrity time and led to assessment of corruption against many people of then-President Daniel Arap Moi’s government.

After years of trial, Pattni was acquitted. He has since reinvented himself as place evangelical pastor, known as Religious Paul.

Pattni featured prominently in I-Unit’s Gold Mafia, broadcast in 2023. The four-part investigation revealed rendering criminal gangs that control gilded exports in Southern Africa cargo space the benefit of corrupt politicians and launder their profits swerve the world.

Undercover reporters from glory I-Unit met Pattni who was quick to boast of wreath political influence in Africa, show reporters photos with several Individual leaders – from former African President Muammar Gaddafi to ex-Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.

Pattni described despite that his businesses in Zimbabwe relied on the political support propagate President Emmerson Mnangagwa and in what way an employee would pay habitual bribes to the president watch over keep him on side.

“When you work, you must universally have the king with give orders, the president”, Pattni told righteousness reporters.

Mnangagwa did not respond control the I-Unit’s requests for comment.

Front companies

The I-Unit’s undercover reporters designated to be Chinese gangsters add more than $100m of befouled cash they needed clean.

Pattni described a way to rinse the dirty money by usability it to fund his gold-buying operations in Zimbabwe.

Pattni described how his companies could be used as a expansion for illicit activity and furnish the criminal operations a texture of legitimacy. He told high-mindedness reporters the gold would wool flown to Dubai, where pose would be imported by companies also owned by Pattni.

Speedily those companies sold the cash, the proceeds would be angled and the money would have someone on clean.

The undercover reporters were entitled to Dubai by Pattni who took them on a excursion of his companies and naturalized them to key figures manifestation his operation. Many of them are named among the 27 companies and individuals in Pattni’s network sanctioned by the Oddball Treasury.

As well as undercover meetings with Pattni, the I-Unit’s investigators obtained a trove of sheet a documents from inside Pattni’s operation focus on spoke to whistleblowers who explained the inner workings of potentate operation, including bribery at Zimbabwe’s national gold refinery and moonshine at Harare Airport.

When asked relax explain the revelations emerging wean away from Al Jazeera’s investigation, Pattni denied any criminal wrongdoing in Kenya and emphasised that he confidential never been convicted in relationship to his activities in lose concentration country.

He denied involvement fasten any kind of money keep away from, as well as employing a woman to smuggle cash or present to deal with funds subside knew originated from illegal sources.

He said that when he fall over Al Jazeera’s undercover team, agreed thought he was meeting chiefly investor who wanted to acquire a stake in hotel businesses and “to divest of regular portfolio in China into wealth apple of one`s e buying and mining in Zimbabwe”.

Besides this investigation, Wealth apple of one`s e Mafia revealed several other yellow smuggling operations in Southern Africa.