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| author/source:Sunday Times (UK) |
| published:Sun 18-Aug-2002 |
| posted on this site:Sun 18-Aug-2002 |
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| Article Type : News |
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| Leaked documents reveal that in return for underwriting the £250m purchase of 14 MiG-29s, Hoogstraten would receive 1.2m acres of prime ranching property, much of which would be taken from white-owned farms |
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Tom Walker
The notorious property magnate Nicholas van Hoogstraten, convicted of manslaughter last month, has been involved in secret negotiations to help the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe buy Russian fighter jets. Leaked documents reveal that in return for underwriting the £250m purchase of 14 MiG-29s, Hoogstraten would receive 1.2m acres (500,000 hectares) of prime ranching property, much of which would be taken from white-owned farms. The Zimbabwean intelligence documents, obtained by The Sunday Times, disclose that Mugabe was told last month by the head of his air force that Hoogstraten was interested in underwriting the loan for the MiGs. At the time Hoogstraten was on trial for killing a former business partner. The document, dated July 5, states: "Mr van Hoogstraten is not unreceptive to the idea of underwriting the loan in exchange for an additional 500,000 hectares of land . . . his current circumstances though are creating difficulties in finalising the arrangements."
Mugabe, who is said to be worried by the superiority of the South African air force and the increased military power of Botswana, has been seeking to upgrade his air force for some years. According to the leaked documents, a Zimbabwean delegation travelled to Russia earlier this year to prepare a technical evaluation of the MiG-29 multi-role combat aircraft. The underwriting deal, outlined in an addendum to the technical evaluation, would make Hoogstraten the biggest landowner in Zimbabwe, where last week the government charged five white farmers and arrested more than 80 others for defying orders to vacate land. Hoogstraten already has a huge landholding of more than 500,000 acres after taking over three estates formerly belonging to Lonrho, the conglomerate built by "Tiny" Rowland, in the 1990s. This weekend Hoogstraten's lawyer Giovanni di Stefano, who has also represented the assassinated Serbian warlord Arkan, denied "any specific allegations" of arms-dealing However, he added: "His (Hoogstraten's) investments and sympathies with the Zimbabwe government are well known and while to date he has received no request for assistance, if any such request were received he would adjudicate each request on a purely business proposition."
Hoogstraten, 57, is in Belmarsh prison awaiting sentence for manslaughter after being found guilty of hiring two hitmen who shot and stabbed to death a former business partner, Mohammed Sabir Raja. The jury accepted that he had hired the men to harm Raja but not that he had specifically ordered his murder. The property baron's ruthless and violent reputation stretched to Zimbabwe where he routinely threatened his farm managers, whom he labelled "white trash". He is said to have fathered five children by three different women there. Hoogstraten's backing for the Mugabe regime won him friends within the ruling Zanu PF party and his lands have been relatively unaffected by the past two years of lawlessness.
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