Mopani was given to IHR for free – Mundubile

By GIDEON NYENDWA

BRIAN Mundubile has accused Government of awarding 51 percent shares in Mopani mine to the International Holdings Resources (IHR) a United Arab Emirates–based company free of charge.

Mr Mundubile, the Patriotic Front Mporokoso Member of Parliament says the failure by Mines and Minerals Development Minister, Paul Kabuswe to disclose where the money for the shares had gone after selling 51 percent of the Mopani Copper Mine shares to IHR meant that the transaction was fraudulent meant to rob Zambians of their natural resources.

In November last year, the UPND government picked IHR, claimed to be the most valuable listed company as the strategic equity partner in Mopani.

And in December last year, the IHR promised it was going to invest US$1.1 billion in Mopani Copper Mines in return for 51 percent ownership of the business.

But Mr Mundubile said while Mr Kabuswe was good at giving out figures about the investment in Mopani, it was shocking that he was failing to tell the nation the amount at which Government sold the 51 percent shares.

“We can safely conclude now that the shares at Mopani were given to IHR free of charge, they failed to give us a figure because there was no money that IHR paid,” he said.

Mr Mundubile explained that Mopani was wholly owned by Zambians, which meant that Zambians were the owners of the mine, wholly owning 100 percent of the shares.

He explained that a share could only be sold at three levels which was at premium, which meant selling more than the value, it could also be sold at par which was the actual value and it could also be sold at a discount.

Mr Mundubile said at all the levels, the previous owner of the shares must be paid before the shares were to be transferred to the new owners.

Mr Mundubile said government never talked about the amount at which the shares were sold but was only talking about the investment that IHR was going to put in. He said IHR when making that investment was putting money in their own company because they were the majority shareholders and demanded that the UPND government should inform Zambians about how much the shares were sold at. Mr Mundubile said in all the transactions under the UPND, there was a pattern that they were using that was suspicious because they were either single sourced or had a third party somewhere in form of a consortium.

He said the transaction at Mopani may not be different from the way they transacted in the dual carriageway and the TAZAMA pipe line that had a fictitious company that works as a third party.