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16-05-2023
PRETORIA: South Africa has launched an investigation into several people involved in a gold smuggling and money laundering scheme exposed by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit.
In a speech to the Parliament of South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa said this week the investigation was in the “inquiry stage”.
“We are committed to preserving the integrity of our financial system in the interests of the broader economy and ordinary citizens,” Ramaphosa added on Thursday. “Details of the steps that are being taken cannot be divulged at this stage without compromising the investigation.”
The investigation is the direct result of Gold Mafia, a four-part series by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) into gold smuggling and money laundering in southern Africa.
In it, Al Jazeera revealed how a group of money launderers and gold smugglers had effectively taken over several South African banks by bribing key members, allowing the criminals to send large amounts of illegally obtained money overseas without raising the suspicions of the authorities.
The key person in this process was a man named Mohamed Khan, nicknamed Mo Dollars.
“He’s sort of held up as a sort of shadowy figure that controls money laundering in South Africa,” money laundering investigator Paul Holden told Al Jazeera.
Among Khan’s biggest clients was Simon Rudland, a Zimbabwean millionaire who owns one of the region’s biggest 
tobacco companies, Gold Leaf Tobacco. South African revenue officials have accused Rudland of evading taxes by selling his cigarettes on the black market.
Rudland authorised Khan’s company SALT Asset Management to carry out foreign exchange transactions on Gold Leaf’s behalf. Khan, who also owned another company called PKSA Group, then used a complex web of fake invoices, front companies and bank accounts to launder hundreds of millions of dollars to bank accounts all over the world, from Dubai to Mauritius to Switzerland.
Those companies are controlled by Rudland and several business partners.
To ensure that this process did not raise any red flags in South Africa’s financial system, Khan would bribe key officials at two of the country’s biggest banks Standard and Absa as well as at Sasfin, a bank that focuses on small businesses. (Int’l News Desk)
