DeLaval admits selling equipment to Mugabe farm
DeLaval sold €320,000 worth of equipment including a 32-cow-capacity milking parlour, two giant cooling tanks and consumables to the Grace Mugabe-controlled Gushungo Dairy Estate.
Sanctions breach
The sale breached European Union sanctions set up in 2002 that forbid any funds or economic resources being given to a list of regime insiders including Grace Mugabe.
Benoit Passard, the head of marketing at DeLaval, said the company regretted the sale but denied having been aware that Mugabe’s wife was linked to the Gushungo Dairy Estate.
Passard said: “At the time of the transaction we had no knowledge or reason to believe that one of the beneficiaries would be Grace Mugabe.”
Control systems
Passard said DeLaval operates the same control systems that other large companies have in place to prevent this kind of occurrence.
On this occasion the system broke down and Passard said DeLaval is now conducting a “thorough survey” to discover exactly what happened in order to prevent any reoccurrence.
DeLaval is not the only major company to have traded with the Gushungo Dairy Estate since it fell into the hands of Grace Mugabe. It was recently revealed that Nestle had been buying between 10 and 15 per cent of the milk processed at its Harare plant from the farm.
Nestle has since promised to stop buying from the dairy farm but claims to be doing so because the crisis situation in the Zimbabwean dairy industry has normalised. The company claims that it only began buying from the Gushungo Dairy Estate because the Zimbabwe Dairy Board was no longer in a position to do so following the collapse of the domestic dairy industry.
