In 2025, an agent of Jayesh Shah, a loan shark and major gold buyer, walked into Zimbabwe carrying US$12 million in cash. He declared it at the airport, and deposited the money into Fidelity Gold Refineries’ account at GetBucks, a bank owned by Shah.
The funds were for gold purchases by Al Shams, Shah’s trading firm, which had been buying gold from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe for years. Days later, RBZ froze Fidelity’s account and demanded to know where US$7 million had come from.
Al Shams went to court. The case that followed has laid bare serious gaps in Zimbabwe’s gold trade and money laundering safeguards, and revealed how government has long relied on loan sharks to keep itself afloat.
High Court Judge Joseph Mafusire ruled in Al Shams’ favour, delivering a pointed judgment that shredded RBZ for its conduct and questioned whether the bank is doing its job as guardian of the financial system.
Under its 2024 gold trade deal with Al Shams, RBZ would supply at least 100 kilogrammes of gold per week. Al Shams would fly the gold to Dubai for sale, bring hard cash back into Zimbabwe, declare it, and deposit it into Fidelity’s GetBucks account.
Mafusire, questioning RBZ’s commitment to preventing money laundering, pointed out: “The applicant (Al Shams) makes the point that Zimbabwe is about the only gold-exporting country where a central bank permits gold buyers and sellers to carry cash into the country.”
On 31 May and 18 June 2025, Al Shams brought in US$6 million and US$6.1 million respectively, US$12.1 million in total, all declared with ZIMRA. RBZ then froze the Fidelity account. Ironically, Fidelity was an RBZ subsidiary until it was moved to the Mutapa Fund in 2024.
RBZ justified freezing the account on “know-your-customer” grounds. Mafusire wasn’t buying it. The bank, he pointed out, knew exactly who Al Shams was; it had been borrowing money from Shah’s outfit for years, purportedly for “national needs”.
“The first respondent has from time to time borrowed from the applicant, which has from time to time lent to it, millions of dollars in hard currency,” the judge wrote.
The court papers show just how deep that relationship runs. Government owes millions to Shah, with loans stretching back to 2002. The money was used, it was said, “for national needs”. Government has been paying him US$250,000 every week.
“In terms of it, the applicant has provided funding to the first respondent as and when required for urgent national needs… the first respondent was consistently paying back to the applicant a whopping US$250, 000 every week in settlement of a debt in excess of US$53 million,” the judge said. “That contractual arrangement had endured for more than two decades.”
Al Shams told the court that RBZ’s move had “not only crippled the applicant’s operations, but also induced the second respondent to breach its contract of gold supply and purchase.”
It called the demand for source-of-funds information “rather strange given the special long-standing relationship between the parties”, since RBZ itself had been the primary beneficiary of Al Shams’ loans since 2002.
The judge said RBZ had failed in its supervisory duty in the matter: “It was the first respondent that did not comply with its obligations under the law.”
Mafusire also called out the RBZ over its botched defence. Its opposing affidavit was purportedly sworn before a Harare commissioner of oaths at a time when the governor was in Washington. RBZ insisted the oath had been taken virtually. The court found it inadmissible, leaving RBZ without formal opposition on the record.
RBZ’s decision to freeze Fidelity’s account was set aside, and RBZ was ordered to pay costs.
The matter should have never come to court, the judge ruled, in a sharp rebuke: “The parties know it: this was a matter not for the courts. It ought to have been settled out of court. That it did not, is manifestly an issue of personality clashes and the preservation of self-images.” – (NewZWire)
