Revealed: Mugabe rigged election with £500m diamond money

The documents, dated June 3, detail how diamond companies pumped cash into a secret fund controlled by Mugabe’s party Zanu-PF. The money was then used to pay an Israeli firm to rig the electoral roll and ‘secure 50 per cent of the adult vote’ for Mugabe.The slush fund was used to gift Mugabe the support […]

The documents, dated June 3, detail how diamond companies pumped cash into a secret fund controlled by Mugabe’s party Zanu-PF. The money was then used to pay an Israeli firm to rig the electoral roll and ‘secure 50 per cent of the adult vote’ for Mugabe.
The slush fund was used to gift Mugabe the support of one million ‘ghosts’ (voters who are dead) and 116,000 voters aged over 100.
In Zanu-PF strongholds, the number of registered voters far exceeded the adult population. The documents reveal that the electoral roll contained 900,000 duplicate names with identical addresses and dates of birth but different ID numbers, allowing Zanu-PF supporters to vote multiple times in different constituencies.
According to the Sunday Times, Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, allegedly gave £56million to the war chest and the government of Equatorial Guinea gave £61million. The paper quoted a political adviser with links to the government, who said: ‘Zanu-PF created millions of ghost voters they used to swing the elections in their favour.’
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague has called for an investigation into the election ‘irregularities’ as ageing tyrant Mugabe was accused of stealing a seventh term in office. Hague voiced ‘grave concerns’ amid widespread reports of massive vote rigging and intimidation of Mugabe’s rivals. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said the 89-year-old autocrat won the election with 61 per cent of the vote, with challenger Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party on 34 per cent. Election observers from the United Nations and the European Union were kept out, while those from China, Russia, Belarus, Sudan and Cuba were invited to attend. But the election was judged to be fair by the African Union. South African president Jacob Zuma offered ‘profound congratulations’ to Mugabe, urging ‘all political parties in Zimbabwe to accept the outcome … as election observers reported it to be an expression of the will of the people’.