Lebanese woman fined 84,000 dollars for smuggling Zimbabwe diamonds

Apr 9, 2007, 7:31 GMT

Harare/Johannesburg - A Lebanese woman, arrested last month in the company of a Zimbabwean government official while trying to smuggle diamonds through Harare International Airport, has been fined the equivalent of 84,000 US dollars, reports said Monday.

Thirty-six-year-old Carole Georges El Martni was sentenced to an 18-month prison term or a fine of 16,456,105 Zimbabwe dollars for being in illegal possession of diamonds, plus a 4,936,830 dollar penalty for attempting to smuggle them to Dubai, the state-controlled Herald reported.

A further five-year jail term was wholly suspended on condition she does not commit a similar offence.

Although officially worth more than 21 million Zimbabwe dollars, the fine is worth just 840 US dollars on the unofficial but widely used parallel market rate for foreign currency.

The Lebanese woman was arrested on March 1 in the company of William Nhara, the principal director in the ministry without portfolio, who was trying to help her to get past the airport officials.

An x-ray machine at the airport had picked up the diamonds in her hand luggage. She pleaded guilty to the charges. The diamonds have been forfeited to the state.

Nhara, who is reported to have pleaded for clemency from President Robert Mugabe, is still in custody.

Zimbabwe's central bank chief last week said the cash-strapped economy had in the last nine months lost around 400 million US dollars worth in potential earnings from the smuggling of diamonds from a rich source in eastern Zimbabwe.

The diamond fields of Marange have been plundered by fortune- seekers after the government cancelled a claim to the area by an international mining firm and allowed impoverished villagers to take matters into their own hands.

The free-for-all also attracted miners and dealers from outside the country.