Swedish dairy company expresses regret for business deal with Grace Mugabe
September 30th, 2009
The Telegraph newspaper have put a Swedish company under the spotlight, reporting that:
“DeLaval, a leading equipment firm based in Sweden, is part of the giant Tetra Laval group owned by the Rausing dynasty which includes some of Britain’s wealthiest people.
It sold a 32-cow-capacity milking parlour, two giant cooling tanks and consumables worth £300,000 to Gushungo Dairy Estate, now controlled by Grace Mugabe.”
A few days ago The Sunday Telegraph broke the news that Nestlé was one of Grace Mugabe’s biggest customers, buying milk from her dairy empire based on farms stolen from commercial farmers. The Swiss government has its own set of targetted sanctions imposed against some of the Zanu PF elite profiteering out of illegal activities, and Grace Mugabe is one of them.
On the Swiss [sanctions] list she is described as “spouse of the head of government and as such engaged in activities that seriously undermine democracy, respect for human rights and the rule of law”.
The Swiss government have since distanced themselves from Nestlé Zimbabwe saying Swiss targetted sanctions measures do not apply to Nestlé Zimbabwe:
a spokesman for the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs said the rules only applied to companies in Switzerland itself, and not their foreign subsidiaries.
Officials had contacted Nestlé headquarters in response to the Telegraph story, he said. “Nestlé confirmed that no individuals or companies in Switzerland were in any way involved in the relevant transactions,” she said. “Therefore, no further investigations are planned at the moment.” Nestlé has denied any wrongdoing in connection with the purchases (via The Telegraph).
DeLaval, the Swedish company, appear to have responded with integrity and accepted responsibility for what they have done:
Benoit Passard, DeLaval’s spokesman, said the company “regrets to confirm” that its South African subsidiary had carried out the deal.
He said: “At the time of this transaction, we had no knowledge or reason to believe that the beneficial owner of the farm was Mrs Mugabe.
“With today’s facts at hand we should simply not be part of this kind of controversial business transaction.
“Unfortunately our internal control systems have failed and we will initiate a project to review and strengthen them to avoid a reoccurrence of a similar event.” The company was investigating to see if its actions had breached the sanctions measures, he added.
“Should that be the case, it would clearly be a breach of our code of business conduct.”
I do hope companies doing business with the Mugabes and other elite members of the asset-stripping Zanu PF government are becoming aware that they can’t hide, and that they will be sniffed out and publically asked to account for controversial deals. I hope too that the the subjects of these targetted sanctions are becoming increasingly aware that its not going to be easy to profiteer in Zimbabwe.
Well done The Telegraph.
