Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, a UK slumlord, will come before a magistrate today in Zimbabwe. He is purported to be a long time associate and friend of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s President for the last 27 years and the man seen by many since 2001 as personally responsible for sinking his country into economic chaos with his land redistribution policies and heavy-handed politics. Zimbabwe was once known as the bread basket of Africa, and boasted the best education system in Sub-Saharan Africa, with a current literacy rate of 94%. Now the economy has spiraled so far out of control that the exchange rate is 15,000 Zimbabwean dollars to one US dollar, and inflation hovers at a rate of around 5000%. Government price fixing in an attempt to slow the rampant inflation has only caused manufacturers and other businesses to report that they simply can’t afford to produce their goods, such as bread and other basic commodities, for such prices when they are paying for raw materials at the inflationary rates. Starvation threatens every day, forcing an average of 3000 Zimbabweans per day to vote with their feet and flee to “plentiful” South Africa, or to the UK or the US if they can afford it. It is disputed whether Mugabe’s policies are truly responsible for this, or whether “the West” and transnational corporations bear the bulk of responsibility in their quest to profit and “superprofit” from Zimbabwe’s plentiful sources of gold, platinum, and copper, as well as coal and other minerals. One of Mugabe’s stopgap measures has been to outlaw the use of foreign currency inside Zimbabwe, and it is this law that his “friend” has fallen foul of. He was arrested on Saturday at his home in Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe, one of several homes which have escaped a 6 million pound judgment against him from a British court, awarded to the family of a business rival. He was convicted of hiring two men to kill the business rival, Muhammed Raja, who had begun fraud proceedings against him, but the murder conviction was overturned on appeal, and he was instead convicted and sentenced for manslaughter. He served one year of the ten year sentence, then was freed. Muhammed Raja’s family then sued the billionaire tycoon and won a judgment against him of 6 million pounds. Van Hoogstraten has since refused to pay any of the judgment, and is thought to have moved to Zimbabwe, where he owns many properties, in order to avoid this financial judgment. Van Hoogstraten, who is thought to hold hundreds of millions of pounds in properties in the UK and Zimbabwe, is infamous for using such tricks as removing roofs and staircases to induce tenants to pay, and is known by the nickname of Nasty Nick. The equivalent of around 716,000 USD was found in various currencies, mostly Zimbabwean, in his home during the arrest. He is alleged to have demanded six months worth of rent from tenants in foreign currencies rather than the devalued Zimbabwean dollar. This is a violation of the Exchange Control Regulations of Zimbabwe. Pornographic magazines were also seized, and charges will be filed for his possession of these as well. One wonders how close a friend he can be of the President of the country in which he has just been arrested. It should certainly play out in the trial.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1685103,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7210972.stm
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