Zimbabwe Vice President’s Wife Arrested For Fraud

Wife of the vice president of Zimbabwe, Mary Mubaiwa, has been arrested by authorities following charges of money laundering, fraud and violating exchange control regulations levelled against her.

This was disclosed in a recent memo by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC).

Spokesperson for ZACC said Mubaiwa may appear in court today, Monday.

ZACC is an institution set up by President Emmerson Mnangagwa to  tackle political corruption, which Transparency International said is costing the country $1 billion yearly.

Reuters reports that an internal ZACC memorandum of the charges revealed  that between October 2018 and May 2019, Mubaiwa allegedly transferred $919,000 to South Africa under the guise of importing goods, which it claims she never did.

According to the memo, Mubaiwa was accused of fraudulently obtaining a marriage certificate without her husband’s consent earlier this year when the vice president was ill. The two were married under Zimbabwe’s customary law since 2011 and have two children.

The vice president, Constantino Chiwenga returned to the country in November after four months of medical trip to China.

Before the arrest, local private media reported that she was going through a divorce with her husband Chiwenga.

But critics of ZACC have accused the agency of being dishonest because its head judge, Loice Matanda-Moyo, is the wife of Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister Sibusiso Moyo, a top ally of President Mnangagwa.