Zim Finance Minister: Diamond Companies ‘Criminal’ for Not Funding Elections

(IDEX Online News) – Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister is looking to the country’s diamond companies to help fill the state’s coffers. Tendai Biti said he was running out of patience with the companies’ “indifference” in helping to fund a constitutional referendum on March 16 and elections in July, reported AP yesterday (Monday).

The minister, who announced that at least $217 million is needed for both polls, said that it was “criminal” that both mines and executives had withheld their profits from the state.

AP reported the minister as saying that total diamond sales for 2012 were $800 million, but the state has received only $45 million, far below the amount of tax that should had been paid.

"It is totally unacceptable that the country is struggling to raise money for the referendum and election when such money is coming from diamond sales," Biti said.

According to AP, Biti and his former opposition party in the coalition have criticized what they call the “militarization of Zimbabwe's diamond mining by Mugabe's loyalist police and military which have gone into partnership with secretive Chinese companies to exploit the stones.”