US and UK sanction gold smuggler Kamlesh Pattni

Pattni featured heavily in Al Jazeera’s Gold Mafia investigation, which looked at gold smuggling in Southern Africa.

An international gold smuggling and money laundering network exposed by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit) has been sanctioned by the US and UK governments. The measures, including asset freezes, confiscation of property and travel bans, target Kenyan-British businessman, Kamlesh Pattni.

Pattni allegedly bribed officials in Zimbabwe to earn illicit profits from the country’s gold and diamond trade. He is also accused of moving dirty money, using his global business empire that extends from Zimbabwe and Dubai to Singapore and London to launder it.

The US Department of Treasury said that Pattni’s fraudulent scheme “has robbed Zimbabwe’s citizens of the benefit of those natural resources while enriching corrupt government officials and criminal actors”.

“Across the globe, when corrupt actors like Pattni choose to exploit openings in governance structures to benefit themselves and their cronies, communities suffer and public trust is undermined,” Acting Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bradley T Smith said in a statement released by the US Treasury Department.

Pattni was born in Kenya, where he became notorious in the 1990s for his alleged role in the so-called Goldenberg Scandal, a gold smuggling scheme that is believed to have robbed Kenya of $600m – equivalent to 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product at the time and led to charges of corruption against many members of then-President Daniel Arap Moi’s government. After years of prosecution, Pattni was acquitted. He has since reinvented himself as an evangelical pastor, known as Brother Paul.