In 2013, one of Zimbabwe’s richest men and arguably one of the most controversial business figures in Southern Africa, Muller Conrad “Billy” Rautenbach, donated multimillion-dollar financial investments in his coal and ethanol businesses to his wife.
This restructuring was explained by the need to “compensate” her for her role in building the family’s wealth.
With the assistance of Singapore-based trust specialist Asiaciti and other advisors, by 2015 Noon was the settlor of the family’s Bonsai Business Trust which owned a non-tradeable family investment fund listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX). The main assets of the fund were inter-company loans (at punitive interest rates) repayable by Rautenbach’s businesses in Zimbabwe.
But a closer look suggests that the donation was just a formality and Rautenbach, who was under US sanctions at the time, was still in control.
As one administrator clarified in an email, Noon was a “very indirect passive investor into the fund (and who does not even have direct profit entitlement or any kind of investment say)”.
The donation had the effect of distancing Rautenbach at a time when he was still under sanctions – and of positioning the family to suck maximum benefit from the Zimbabwe operations should they ever be profitable enough to service the loans.
Records of the Rautenbach marriage settlement and family trust fund are amongst a batch of 1.8 million files leaked from Asiaciti’s computer servers.
The data provides a partial window into Rautenbach’s more recent business exploits – including details about the significant financial losses sustained by his company Green Fuel, a $300-million ethanol joint venture company with the Zimbabwean government that has been described as “his greatest achievement”.
The files form part of the Pandora Papers, an anonymous leak of more than 11.9 million documents from the databases of 14 corporate service providers that set up and manage shell companies and trusts in tax havens around the globe.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) is leading the investigation and has shared these files with over 600 journalists across the world in the biggest journalistic collaboration in history. The leaked documents mainly consist of word and PDF files, images and email conversations in the period between 1996 and 2020 and in some instances as far back as the 1970s.
AmaBhungane analysed a number of company documents and a trail of email communication beginning in 2013 when the Rautenbach trust fund structure was constituted.
Detailed questions were sent to Green Fuel and to Rautenbach’s personal assistant, but received no response.
Rautenbach’s controversial reputation flows from allegations of using his proximity to government leaders to gain favourable access to business opportunities.
The compliance and risk documents seen by amaBhungane show that Asiaciti consistently rated the family’s trust fund structure as “high risk” – primarily due to Rautenbach’s status as a politically exposed person (PEP), his influence in Zimbabwe, the negative reports around his businesses and the substantial debt exposure the fund had to his businesses.
He spent the period between 1999 and 2009 as a fugitive from South Africa after he fled the country when he was charged with corruption and customs tax fraud. His company, S.A. Botswana Hauliers (SABOT) would later pay a fine of R40 million, but Rautenbach never admitted any personal liability and charges against him were withdrawn as part of the 2009 settlement.
Rautenbach’s controversial ties to leaders of former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF regime eventually landed him on the US and European Union (EU) sanctions list in 2008.
The US called him one of Mugabe’s “cronies” and accused him of providing “support to senior regime officials during Zimbabwe’s intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo”.
Both Noon and Rautenbach submitted letters to Asiaciti declaring the source of funds for the assets which would be placed in the trust fund.
In his letter, Rautenbach states the family’s wealth was a result of “financing and equity investments I have made over the past 15 years in Southern and Central Africa, mostly Zimbabwe”.
“The origin of the capital used to finance and develop these activities stems from the original family transport and logistics business SABOT, as well as from the mining operations in the DRC which were sold to the AIM listed Central African Mining and Exploration Company Plc (CAMEC) in 2006, in exchange for cash and shares”.
CAMEC was sold to Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) in 2009 and, while Rautenbach was under sanctions, it is reported that he made an estimated $50 million from the sale.
Motivating the transfer of assets to his wife in 2013, Rautenbach wrote: “This donation was made in order to compensate for the effects of the default marital regime under which we were married in 1984 and which today does not reflect or adequately provide for all the support and hard work she has contributed over the years to help growing our investments.”
Documents show that Noon, who, in one email was described as a “lady who has more of an ‘Old style Europe’ family wealth background”, also transferred her own “traditional family wealth” into the trust structure – but the main assets were loans Rautenbach made to his businesses, the most significant chunk flowing to Green Fuel.
Green Fuel is a biofuel company which produces ethanol from sugarcane.
It’s owned by Rautenbach’s Rating Investments and Macdom Investments in partnership with the Zimbabwean state’s Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (Arda) which pledged the use of its land leases where Green Fuel operates in exchange for a 10% stake in the company.
Zimbabwe introduced mandatory blending of all fuel with ethanol in 2011, a policy which created a monopoly for Green Fuel, which, until 2019, was the only licensed company that could supply ethanol for blending.
Rautenbach has been accused of paying government and Zanu-PF officials to maintain Green Fuel’s dominance and increase the percentage of ethanol blend because, as the company’s leaked financial documents show, this was critical for the plant’s sustainability.
He did not respond to amaBhungane’s questions about this, but has previously branded his most vocal accuser, former Zanu-PF fixer Temba Mliswa, as “an extortionist”.
Over the years the percentage of ethanol that must be blended with fuel has increased and is now set at 20%.
News24
