Close: Nicholas Van Hoogstraten has emerged as an intimate friend of ageing despot Robert Mugabe
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His Excellency was in mad, sparkling
form. After thousands of supporters were bussed into a football stadium
for an election rally this week, Robert Gabriel Mugabe used the podium
to blame Zimbabwe’s ills on western politicians keen to promote equal
rights for homosexuals.
Flanked
by his wife Grace, who has been accused of having an affair with the
country’s finance chief because her 89-year-old husband can no longer
satisfy her, Mugabe promised to ‘chop the heads off’ gays, and took a
swipe at Barack Obama and David Cameron for supporting their rights.
‘This
homosexuality thing seeks to destroy our lineage by saying John and
John should wed, Maria and Maria should wed,’ thundered Mugabe as his
wife nodded approvingly alongside him. ‘Imagine this son born out of an
African father — Obama — who says if you want aid, you should accept the
homosexuality practice. We will never do that.’
In
a long, rambling speech, the despot added: ‘If you take men and lock
them in a house for five years and tell them to come up with two
children and they fail to do that, then we will chop off their heads.’
He went on to accuse other African countries of ‘accepting the practice’ in return for aid donations from Britain and America.
Of
course Mugabe, who, despite his infirmity and age, is fighting a
general election this Wednesday, has long railed at interference by
Westerners.
He notoriously
drove the country’s white farmers — often of British descent — off their
land in a prolonged campaign of terror, and is now introducing laws
banning whites from owning businesses.
Yet,
curiously, one British man is flourishing under Mugabe’s murderous
regime. While his fellow white farmers have been murdered in their
hundreds, and their land given to the despot’s cronies, this slight
grey-haired individual has become Zimbabwe’s biggest landowner.
As
well as owning a staggering 1,600 square miles of prime land in the
heart of the country (Cornwall is only 1,400 square miles), the British
exile also owns two sprawling homes replete with tennis courts, swimming
pools and garish chrome architecture, with grounds patrolled by
Mugabe’s secret police.
So
who is this intimate friend of the ageing despot? Step forward Nicholas
Van Hoogstraten, the self-confessed ‘amoral businessman’ who made his
fortune as a slum landlord in Britain but is better known for being the
brains behind the gruesome gangland slaying of a business rival, who was
stabbed five times before being shot in the head.
Once
described by a judge as a ‘self-imagined devil who thinks he is an
emissary of Beelzebub’, Hoogstraten was born in Bognor in 1946 and as an
11-year-old schoolboy started selling stamps to noted collectors.
Anger: Robert Mugabe used the podium to blame
Zimbabwe's ills on western politicians keen to promote equal rights for
homosexuals during a rally this week
It later transpired that the young
Hoogstraten, who claimed to have a stamp collection worth £30,000, had
hired classmates to steal the stamps for him from specialist shops.
By
the time he was 14, he had taken to wearing a suit to school and would
excuse himself from lessons to sit in an empty classroom, where he would
read the Financial Times and attend to business deals.
As
a teenager, he started a loan-shark business that saw him take property
deeds as collateral for loans. He also ran nightclubs in Brighton and
once called Rod Stewart, the rock star, a greedy ‘little runt’ in a row
over takings.
He was a bully to his mother Edna and hated his father Charles.
While life expectancy for ordinary people in the country has plummeted to 50 years, Hoogstraten¿s fortune has soared
He once changed his name by deed poll
to Adolf von Hessen, and used countless aliases to evade the authorities
while, over the next five decades, he made a multi-million pound
fortune.
He also picked up a
string of convictions for offences which ranged from organising a
henchman to throw a grenade at a priest, to the 2002 conviction for
manslaughter for the killing of that business rival. The verdict was
overturned on appeal, but he was ordered to pay the victim’s family £6
million in a civil case in 2005.
Two
years later, this odious individual slunk out of the country, leaving
behind his £40 million Sussex mansion Hamilton Place, together with the
vast mausoleum he built there for himself — and ended up in Zimbabwe,
where he already had business interests, determined to make himself even
richer.
He insists ‘the
only purpose in creating great wealth is to separate oneself from the
riffraff’, and famously keeps details of his business deals in his head
so that there is ‘nothing in writing, no records of anything’.
Unfortunately
for Hoogstraten, his friends in Zimbabwe do not follow his example.
Mugabe’s intelligence agencies, for instance, which run a myriad of
criminal operations, from diamond smuggling to arms dealing, keep
detailed written dossiers on all their partners-in-crime.
After
reports this week that Mugabe is, predictably, planning to rig the
forthcoming elections, Hoogstraten was named as having donated
$3 million to Mugabe, who has set up terror camps to hold political
opponents and has ordered thousands of unemployed thugs to be deployed
to intimidate voters.
Hoogstraten said this week that the donation was not being used to rig election results.
But secret documents passed to me this
week in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, by a senior intelligence source
at the heart of Mugabe’s regime appear to show what Hoogstraten wants in
return for his largesse — and, if true, they reveal the price is
exceptionally high.
In short, the documents suggest he wants access to the world’s biggest diamond find this century.
Landlord: Nicholas van Hoogstraten, pictured in
Harare in 2008, wants access to the world¿s biggest diamond find this
century in exchange for his largesse
Mugabe and his military were
alerted to reports of locals finding priceless gems near Marange in a
remote south-west corner of the country in 2007. The military
immediately sealed the area and chased and killed local prospectors off
the land.
Now it is a
highly-militarized zone, patrolled with soldiers and dogs, to prevent
local smugglers taking the stones, which experts say could be worth many
billions of pounds.
Headed
Top Secret and allegedly prepared for Mugabe’s shadowy military junta,
known as the Joint Operations Command, the documents I was passed claim
that Hoogstraten has struck an agreement with Mugabe to be given a
lucrative diamond concession at the Marange diamond fields.
Experts
believe the gems from Marange could account for more than a quarter of
all diamonds mined around the globe, and Mugabe and his corrupt cronies
are already siphoning millions from the mine every year.
The
documents also suggest that two of Hoogstraten’s sons, Maximillion and
Alexander, are appointed to a company called Mbada Diamonds, which is
run by the president to extract the diamonds and sell them to China.
Youthful: Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, pictured in
1968, is now regarded as a 'favoured son' of the despot and the generals
who rule Zimbabwe with an iron grip
Under the heading ‘Agreements’, these
secret papers say that Hoogstraten has been granted such lucrative
concessions because he has ‘shown unwavering financial and moral support
to Security 1 (code for Mugabe), and remains loyal and steadfast to
ZANU-PF and the security apparatus with timely donations’.
Such
loyalty to Mugabe’s regime means Hoogstraten’s family would join the
list of unsavoury characters already mining these gems and taking them
out of the country via an elaborate network of aircraft, vehicles and
men, all controlled by the Zimbabwean regime.
The
mines are currently operated by Sino-Zimbabwe, a joint venture between
Mugabe’s government and the Chinese government, and Anjin Investments,
another company with ties to Beijing which is building a new
multi-million-pound military training and spy centre for Mugabe in
return for access to the gems.
‘These
diamonds have been captured by political elites and are used to fund
violence and keep these people in power,’ says Farai Maguwu, an
independent investigator into abuses at the diamond fields. ‘That means
these diamonds are blood diamonds.’
Not
that this would trouble Hoogstraten. Since moving to Zimbabwe, he has
been making himself indispensable to Robert Mugabe’s regime.
So,
while life expectancy for ordinary people in the country has plummeted
to 50 years for both men and women, Hoogstraten’s fortune has soared.
Rant: The Zimbabwean President, pictured addressing party supporters, is reportedly planning to rig the forthcoming elections
On his huge ranch, called Central Estates, Hoogstraten has vast cattle herds and thousands of acres of crops.
He
also has game animals, and regularly invites guests from Mugabe’s inner
circle, as well as overseas business guests, to trophy-hunt these
elephants, big cats and buffalo. His private life in Zimbabwe is equally
colourful. Before he left Britain, he had five children by three women —
and he now describes himself as a ‘confirmed bachelor with three or
four mistresses’.
Boast: Van Hoogstraten is a self-confessed 'amoral businessman'
Such are his financial links to the
Mugabe regime, he is now regarded as a ‘favoured son’ of the despot and
the generals who rule Zimbabwe with an iron grip. Many here are
terrified that Mugabe, using financial help from businessmen, will this
week unleash a campaign of terror and violence, forcing people to vote
for him just as he did in the last elections in 2008.
Mugabe
is already using cash from supporters of his ZANU-PF party to deploy
thousands of youths — recruited from slums and trained at military
barracks — to wreak havoc.
He
is also using his 300,000-strong army of intelligence agents to ensure
opposition strongholds are targeted, with instructions to carry out acts
of sabotage and fire-bombings at voting stations if it appears that
Morgan Tsvangirai, his opponent, is taking a poll lead.
According
to the documents about his nefarious business activities, cash supplied
by Hoogstraten has been used to buy vehicles for Mugabe’s secret police
to target opponents.
The
documents also indicate that after Hoogstraten handed over $500,000 for
Mugabe’s coffers at a private ceremony in April this year, he demanded —
and was given — guarantees concerning a whole raft of business concerns
should Mugabe ‘win’ this week’s elections.
As
well as the diamond concessions, the documents claim that Hoogstraten
has asked the regime for paratroopers to patrol his businesses, and for
secret service agents to continue to provide a 24-hour guard at his
opulent Harare properties in case his enemies should try to kill him.
The
documents state that Hoogstraten, 68, has also been granted assurances
that his other business interests in Africa — which include dealings
with President Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, and mines in the Democratic
Republic of Congo — will be protected as far as possible with the help
of Mugabe’s military and diplomatic might.
Amid
predictions that Mugabe could be ousted by his own ZANU party if he
loses the poll, Hoogstraten has ensured that he has built up close links
with Emmerson Mnangagwa, the country’s defence minister, known as The
Crocodile on account of his violence and savagery towards opponents.
Desperate
to take over from Mugabe, who suffers from prostate cancer and
frequently falls asleep at politburo meetings, Mnangagwa is a ruthless
killer who frequently visits Hoogstraten.
Incredibly,
the documents claim that Hoogstraten has also promised to pay for
public relations companies, as well as providing $2.5million in cash for
security and an aircraft to be used by Mugabe in the event that he has
to leave the country ‘due to an inconclusive electoral outcome on July
31’.
That, however, is
unlikely to happen. Mugabe and Nicholas Marcel Van Hoogstraten have too
much to lose from their macabre relationship.
Which is terrible news for the poor, suffering people of Zimbabwe.
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