Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe suspended the attorney general and appointed a three-member tribunal to investigate allegations that the state's highest law officer abused his powers, the official media reported on Saturday.
Sobusa Gula-Ndebele was arrested and charged with misconduct in the case of a fugitive banker on Nov. 8, but returned to work a few days after his release from police questioning.
Misheck Sibanda, the secretary to Mugabe's Cabinet, said Gula-Ndebele was formally suspended with effect on Friday. He named Judge Chinembiri Bhunu as head of the tribunal.
"After its inquiry, the tribunal will make its recommendations to President Mugabe on whether Mr Gula-Ndebele should remain as the country's attorney general," Sibanda said in an official announcement, the state Herald newspaper reported.
At the time of Gula-Ndebele's arrest last month it was alleged he assured banker James Mushore he would not be prosecuted on accusations of hard currency offenses if he returned from self-imposed exile in Britain. He met secretly with Mushore in a restaurant in Zimbabwe in September without informing authorities that the fugitive was back in the country.
Mushore was one of the country's most high-profile fugitives and had been on the police wanted list since 2004. He was arrested in Harare on Oct. 24 and was charged with violating hard currency exchange regulations through his National Merchant Bank in Harare in 2004.
Mushore, freed on bail after several days in jail, is awaiting trial on the alleged currency violations.
Several top bankers and corporate executives have fled during the worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, most accused of currency offenses.
Some say they fled currency and other charges they said were engineered to silence their criticism of the government's economic policies that led to acute shortages of food, gasoline and most basic goods.
A single US dollar fetches a record 2 million Zimbabwe dollars on the illegal black market and few transactions are done at the official exchange rate of 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars to US$1.
Even the central bank has acknowledged buying hard currency at black market rates to help pay for the nation's gasoline and power imports.
While he has not been openly critical of the government, Gula-Ndebele has refused to approve some politically related state prosecutions.
Central bank governor Gideon Gono, addressing the closing session of the ruling party's annual convention on Friday, alleged that ruling-party leaders and senior government officials were among "cash barons" fueling black-market racketeering that caused acute shortages of local currency ahead of the holiday season.
Several banks in Harare were closed on Saturday saying they had no cash for withdrawals and long lines snaked from automated teller machines programmed to dispense just 5 million Zimbabwe dollars to each customer.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS