In 2016, Robert Mugabe, then the president of Zimbabwe, announced that a mining company had looted diamonds worth $15bn from the country. The company was Anjin, a joint venture between a Chinese firm and the Zimbabwean military.
Anjin strongly denied the allegations. But considering the dire state of the country at the time – a collapsed healthcare system, chronic fuel and food shortages, dilapidated roads – the claims were explosive.
Yet in January this year, the state-owned Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company pulled out of the most lucrative diamond-producing block in the east of the country and handed it over to the very same company: Anjin.
