内容摘要：Key swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan are located in the region, and they leaned Republican on election day, helping to propel Trump to a second term as president.

Key swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan are located in the region, and they leaned Republican on election day, helping to propel Trump to a second term as president.

Do you have information on money laundering or want to share another tip? Contact Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit on +974 5080 0207 (WhatsApp/Signal), or find other ways to reach out on our“They can buy the gold directly in cash, because we are the only sector in the country that is paying in foreign exchange on a cash basis,” Rushwaya said during the call.

During the meetings, Angel and Doolan, also a British pastor and music artist, said everything they were doing had the blessings of ‘number one’, referring to Mnangagwa. Doolan even offered to set up a face-to-face meeting with Mnangagwa on the sidelines of the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in 2021.The gang also offered to help launder money by building properties near the tourist town of Victoria Falls. This, Angel said, would be appreciated by Mnangagwa because it would allow him “to cut a ribbon”, and build his legacy as a leader who brought visible infrastructure investments into Zimbabwe.“A politician wants to open something,” Angel told Al Jazeera’s undercover reporters. “Gold is easy, but there is nowhere to cut a ribbon.”

Tendai Biti, former Zimbabwe minister of finance, told Al Jazeera that although gold trade by law should be overseen by the central bank, the vast majority of gold is smuggled out of the country.“We have got world class deposits of gold, but we have nothing to show for it,” Biti said. “I think we are losing about a billion US dollars in illegal gold exports — which is a euphemism for gold smuggling.”

“The biggest challenge Zimbabwe now faces is the existential threat that comes from this mafia, the gold mafia.”

When asked for a response to Al Jazeera’s investigation, Fidelity denied all involvement in money laundering or smuggling. Mnangagwa, Angel, Doolan and Rushwaya did not respond to our inquiries.“People don’t like to answer an advert for criminal scamming, and it’s hard to advertise that. But once they’re there, it’s like – actually, we will pay you. We may have taken your passport, but there is a route to quite a lucrative opportunity here and we will give you a small part of that,” he said.

The issue of salaries paid to coerced and enslaved workers complicates efforts to repatriate trafficking victims, who may be considered complicit criminals due to their status as “paid” workers in the scam centres, said Eric Heintz, from the US-based anti-trafficking organisation International Justice Mission (IJM).“We know of individuals being paid for the first few months they were inside, but then it tapers off to the point where they are making little – if any – money,” Heintz said, describing how victims become “trapped in this cycle of abuse unable to leave the compound”.

“This specific aspect was a challenge early on with the victim identity process – when an official would ask if an individual previously in the scam compound was paid, the victim would answer that initially he or she was. That was enough for some officials to not identify them as victims,” Heintz said.Some workers have also been sold between criminal organisations and moved across borders to other scam centres, he said.