By Political Reporter- Harare Zanu PF provincial chairman, Godwills Masimirembwa, was Thursday questioned by the police over fraud allegations involving a foreign national, sources at Harare Central Police have revealed.

A close ally of Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government, Masimirembwa was questioned at Harare Central Police Station over allegations of extorting US$300,000 from a Rwandan business person, whom he falsely accused of funding Mozambican rebels.

The sources said Masimirembwa held “a brief secret meeting with senior police officers” at Harare Central Police Station, where they “warned and cautioned him” and released him.

This is, however, not the first time Masimirembwa has been associated with fraud and or extortion allegations

The perennial losing Zanu PF Harare East Parliamentary candidate is a disgraced lawyer who was deregistered over a decade ago after being blacklisted for embezzling trust funds.

In 2007, Zanu PF handpicked him to lead the controversial Incomes and Pricing Commission (NIPC), where he was accused of extorting businesses he accused of price gouging, leading to the disappearance of basic goods from shelves.

Masimirembwa’s involvement in corruption escalated in 2013 when he was implicated in a $6 million diamond bribe from a Ghanaian investor seeking a deal with the state-run Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) to mine diamonds in Marange.

During his tenure, and when he (Masimirembwa) was still the ZMDC chair, former President Robert Mugabe revealed that US$15 billion in diamond revenue was unaccounted for—a sum believed to have been siphoned off by Mnangagwa and Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who oversaw military-linked diamond operations and later orchestrated the 2017 coup against Mugabe.