The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has imposed sanctions on 28 individuals and companies involved in a global gold smuggling and money laundering network based in Zimbabwe.
The central person of this network is Kamlesh Mansukhlal Damji Pattni. In the 1990s, after he was accused of bribing officials, Pattney left Kenya for Zimbabwe.
In Zimbabwe, Pattney became friends with President Robert Mugabe and restored a scheme similar to the one he implemented in Kenya.
Pattni and members of his network received money by selling Zimbabwe’s natural resources in foreign jurisdictions. When Pattney and his network returned to Zimbabwe with money from the sale of natural resources, they inflated the amount of money imported back into the country, received compensation for the inflated money and bribed government officials in Zimbabwe to obtain protection for their illegal activities.
The main one among the network of companies that Pattney controls is Sun Multinational DMCC, an ostensibly legitimate company ultimately wholly owned by Marwa Investments Limited, which in turn is owned by one of Pattney’s longtime supporters and his son-in-law, Mukesh Manuskhlal Vaya.
According to OFAC data, the Pattni network affects, in addition to Zimbabwe and Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, Kyrgyzstan, the United Kingdom and Singapore
