Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission (ZACC) on Sunday announced the arrest of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga’s wife on charges of money laundering, fraud and violating exchange control regulations, reported Reuters.
Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) spokesman John Makamure confirmed that Marry Mubaiwa, 38, was arrested on Saturday evening and will be made to appear in the court on Monday. He said Marry was detained at a Harare police station. He did not give any further details.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa had appointed the ZACC earlier this year to keep a tab on high-level corruption, which watchdog Transparency International estimates is costing the country $1 billion annually.
According to a Reuters report, ZACC’s internal memorandum of the charges levied against Mubaiwa showed that she unlawfully transferred $919,000 to South Africa under the guise of importing goods between October 2018 and May 2019. Mubaiwa has refuted all the charges.
Mubaiwa’s arrest follows local media reports that claim that she and her husband Chiwenga were going through a divorce. The two have been married since 2011 and have two children together.
The ZACC memo also accused Mubaiwa of fraudulently obtaining a marriage certificate earlier this year without Chiwenga’s consent when he was on a deathbed in South Africa before he was airlifted to China.
Chiwenga came back to Zimbabwe last month after taking medical treatment in China for five long months for a blocked esophagus. He has not been seen in public, including at the annual ruling party conference that ended on Saturday. Notably, Vice President Chiwenga played a crucial role in toppling the late former president Robert Mugabe in a de facto military coup in 2017.
Some critics of the anti-corruption commission claim the agency is conflicted because its head judge, Loice Matanda-Moyo, is the wife of Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister Sibusiso Moyo, a close aide of President Mnangagwa.
