The Legatum Institute, a London-based independent research, policy and advocacy organization, has recently ranked Ethiopia under the Meles dictatorship 108 out of 110 countries that were surveyed (See here). And yet the U.S.-based National Foundation for Infectious Diseases is preparing to honor TPLF Health Minister Tedros Adhanom, the person who is responsible for one of the worst health care systems in the world, with the 2011 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award in March 2011. This is outrageous and an insult to the victims of Tedros, who is a politburo member of the genocidal Tigray People Liberation Front (Woyanne) that is currently brutalizing the people of Ethiopia. Ethiopian physicians around the world who are unable to practice medicine in their own country may want to inform NFID about TPLF’s disasterious ethnic aparthied health policy.
Following a widespread alms boycott by Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, the illegitimate synod presided by Tagay Gebremedhin (formerly Abune Paulos) has decided to destroy the statue he recently built for himself in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.
Although Tagay Gebremedhin and his cadres are trying to give a different spin to the decision to thorn down the statue, sources in Addis Ababa who are close to the Church told Ethiopian Review that the real reason is economics — churchgoers across the country simply refused to give donations. In some areas, church administrators were forced to make people pay for holy water.
We are gathering more information on this developing issue. Also watch the video below:
Prof. Seid Hassan has informed us a couple of years ago that without the hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign currency that Ethiopians in the Diaspora send to Ethiopia (remittance), the Meles dictatorship would have faced a grave financial crisis. In a recent book, Dr Aklog Birarra has pointed out that Ethiopians in the Diaspora remit over $1.2 billion through official channels alone such as Western Union. An equal amount of money is sent to Ethiopia through non-official channels such as hawala.
In considering anti-remittance campaign and other actions against Meles, it helps to revisit Dr Seid’s insightful article about investment in Ethiopia. [Click here to read]
Ethiopia’s mother of corruption Azeb Mesfin has found her match in Grace Mugabe, the wife of Zimbabwe’s dictator. The similarities between these two witches is amazing. Like Grace, Azeb is forming business partnerships left and right. Like Grace, Azeb is a whore. Read the article below about Grace Mugabe and judge for yourself.
When President Robert Mugabe’s younger sister, Sabina, died in Harare after a short illness, pictures showed the 86-year-old president looking devastated at her funeral.
According to one of Mugabe’s most trusted bodyguards who was present at the time, Sabina Mugabe, 75, warned her brother before she died that he was being betrayed by two of the most important people in his personal and political life: his wife and his personal banker, a pivotal member of his regime.
Sabina told the president that Grace and Gideon Gono, the powerful head of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and Mugabe’s confidant, were secret lovers.
Grace, 41 years Mugabe’s junior, has taken lovers before. One lover, Peter Pamire, died in a mysterious car accident. James Makamba, one of Zimbabwe’s richest businessmen and a top-ranking Zanu-PF official, enjoyed her favours but their affair ended in tears, too, when a furious and sexually jealous Mugabe ran him out of town in fear of his life.
But never before has Grace been romantically involved with a politician in Mugabe’s inner circle. And never before has a man so close to the president risked allowing it to happen.
The dangers from discovery are high. Zimbabwe state intelligence officials made it known that Mugabe’s detection of the affair had already led to the murder of the bodyguard present at Sabina’s bedside and more trouble would almost certainly follow.
“Once he hears something like that, I think someone will go and meet God,” said one intelligence official.
A pillar of the regime who Mugabe personally appointed in 2003 to head the central bank, Gono was a person he absolutely trusted ; furthermore, he was a family friend. The two have known each other since 1995 when Mugabe appointed Gono, then chief executive of a major Harare commercial bank, to be his personal banker.
“Mugabe trusted Gono. He even thought our boss was taking care of the first lady keeping a protective eye on her so that she could not again be adulterous,” said one senior official in Gono’s office who became aware of their secret affair, and who spoke out about it for the first time last month, on condition of anonymity.
Another in Gono’s entourage said Gono and Grace, who are business partners in several enterprises in Zimbabwe and South Africa, had been planning a life together after Mugabe’s death.
Mugabe’s marriage to Grace is itself founded on an adulterous relationship which shocked many Zimbabweans at the time. Grace was working as a junior secretary in the typing pool in Mugabe’s office and married to an air force officer when the two began having an affair. They had two children while Mugabe’s first wife, Sally – who was universally popular – battled a terminal kidney disease. After her death in 1996, Mugabe wed Grace, who is widely loathed and notorious for her lavish shopping sprees.
The Gono source said Grace and Gono first became romantically involved in 2005 and had seen each other regularly since. When they could not find an excuse to meet in South Africa or further abroad, they met at Gushungu Dairy Estate, Grace’s 1000ha farm about an hour from Harare.
They met twice, sometimes three times, a month.
They also met at the Harare home of a woman friend and business associate of Grace who is a Zanu-PF stalwart. They exchanged e-mails, which one official privy to them described as “explicit”.
He said Mugabe had always naively accepted as true Grace’s story that she and Gono are related. They are not, although both come from the town of Chivhu, 200km south of Harare.
The enormity of Gono’s betrayal would have come as a devastating emotional shock to Mugabe when Sabina revealed it to him.
Mugabe went to visit his sister between 6pm and 7pm on July 26 in the intensive care ward at the Avenues Clinic in Harare. As he sat on her bed with senior police commissioner Cain Chademana, his most trusted bodyguard, at his side, she told him the truth.
Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) officials said Chademana told them of the discussion afterwards and said that the president left the meeting devastated.
“At first, Mugabe did not want to believe it was true, but Sabina told him to ask his men about the affair and make up his own mind,” said the officials, quoting what Chademana had told them.
“It was maddening because Mugabe had encouraged their friendship and sometimes asked Grace to see Gono to discuss mutual business matters.”
In early August, a few days after Sabina’s funeral, Mugabe and Grace left together for China on an official visit.
Mugabe took his sister’s advice when he returned to Harare later in August, the state intelligence officials said .
He summoned his bodyguard, Chademana, to tell him exactly what had been going on. Like others in the state security services close to the Mugabes, Chademana had had good reason to believe Grace and Gono were having an affair even before Sabina revealed it in his presence, but had thought it wisest to keep quiet about it.
When Mugabe summoned him in August, “Chademana admitted that he knew something was going on which he had not said before”, said the state security officials.
“Mugabe is said to have gone very silent.”
It was a fatal admission. A matter of days later, at the end of August, Chademana mysteriously died. State security officials handed over his body to his son, Welcome, for burial. No autopsy was performed. The dead police officer was a decorated veteran of Zimbabwe’s liberation war in the 1970s. He had served as Mugabe’s aide de camp for many years and officials in the president’s office let it be known that Mugabe was deeply shocked.
“It will be difficult for us to come to terms with this sad reality,” said Albert Ngulube, the department’s assistant director in a speech at Chademana’s funeral.
“We are not a murderous organisation but peace-loving Zimbabweans who are determined to protect our country.”
His remarks stopped further speculation of foul play arising from the bodyguard’s sudden demise.
But CIO sources last week revealed that Chademana was poisoned under Mugabe’s instructions by Mugabe’s intelligence men, allegedly employing an undetectable poison. The instructions were carried out after Mugabe had briefed Happyton Bonyongwe, the director general of the CIO.
It was a desperate measure to keep Grace’s affair with Gono from leaking out and making a mockery of the ageing president.
“Mugabe wanted it hushed up at all costs,” said a security official. “Gono is his personal banker, knows Mugabe’s financial secrets and is trusted. And there he is betraying the old man by having an affair with his wife.
“It would be too humiliating and could not be allowed to stand. In addition, Mugabe concluded that Chademana was the source of humiliating leaks about the president’s deteriorating health.”
Mugabe hopes the embarrassing secret of his wife’s infidelity with one of his right-hand men is safely buried with the body of the hapless Chademana in the Warren Hills cemetery outside Harare.
The reserve bank governor’s betrayal presents Mugabe with a dilemma. Throughout most of the last decade of political turmoil and economic meltdown Gono was central to Mugabe’s survival in power.
As the controller of the state coffers, he wielded enormous influence and patronage essentially saving Mugabe’s presidency by finding ways to keep the money flowing when the value of the Zimbabwe dollar had collapsed through hyperinflation.
By dipping into the coffers to fund all Zanu-PF projects, seeing the army generals and the security services were paid and bankrolling the party’s 2008 terror campaign to get Mugabe re-elected, Gono made himself indispensable.
After the reaching of a power-sharing agreement last year when Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai joined a coalition with Mugabe, Gono lost some of his power. But he still remains vitally important to Mugabe and the key figures in his regime and cannot be easily got rid of.
As Mugabe’s personal banker Gono, 50, manages the president’s vast family fortune looted from the country which Mugabe and Grace have stashed away in an opaque network of overseas bank accounts, business ventures and properties, many in the Far East. He also looks after the financial interests of General Constantine Chiwenga, the armed forces chief and others who surround Mugabe at the top and have enriched themselves through their positions.
A measure of Gono’s importance is that Mugabe unilaterally reappointed him to his post last year against considerable opposition from Tsvangirai and, clearly feeling his departure would be highly damaging, he has ever since resisted all demands to dismiss him.
Meanwhile, it looks as if Chademana’s killing could backfire. There are rumblings of discontent within the state intelligence agency where officers, already demoralised by low pay and the killing of Chademana, are talking. Last week several came forward with more revelations which showed the depth of Gono’s betrayal.
One who worked in Gono’s office said he first became aware of his boss’s affair with Grace several years ago when he accompanied him to Malaysia on official business.
During the visit Gono, who had been booked into the Sheraton hotel in Kuala Lumpur, the capital, quickly disappeared to the Berjaya Langkawi beach and spa resort on the island of Langkawi to see her.
The source said that he and his colleagues thought nothing of it until they came to settle Gono and Grace’s hotel bill for the stay and found they were paying for a double room.
Asked how he reacted he said: “In our job we never trust anyone. Even those we are working with we don’t trust. We saw and kept quiet. It is very sensitive.”
At the end of last year, he said, the couple had shared a room at the Cape Grace hotel in Cape Town. Another of Mugabe’s right-hand men, the former Air Vice-Marshal Robert Mhlanga – a key figure in the controversial exploitation of Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond field which is so rich it could make Zimbabwe the world’s top diamond producer – was also said to be aware of Grace’s affair with Gono but kept silent.
Mhlanga has hosted the couple at his Johannesburg house on several occasions during their so-called business trips to South Africa.
“Ask me for another trip like that!” Grace said to Gono afterwards in one e-mail message seen by the official.
More incriminating claims came from the workers at Gushungu, Grace’s dairy farm, an hour’s drive from Harare.
The couple pass off their frequent visits to the farm as business and make a point of arriving and leaving separately.
“At first I did not think anything was going on between them outside business because each time Gono came he bought money with him for the farmworkers,” said one.
“But later on I started suspecting that something was going on each time we visited the house after they had gone.
“No one was allowed inside while they were there. After they left we went back inside. At once it was clear the bedroom had been used for their meeting even though the first lady’s bodyguards had tidied up. They had remade the bed but we could see the sheets had been used. And we noticed the perfume in the bedroom.”
Asked if it surprised him that Gono and Grace were using the farm for an affair, one worker said: “I am not surprised by it. Some others might be. But those who worked at the farm and particularly those who worked in the house will not be astonished.
“It was only going to be a matter of time before someone said it for us. We could not say it ourselves because of fear.”
In preparation for a united front, Ethiopian opposition groups need to answer what their common goal is. According to Ethiopian Review editorial adviser Ato Sioum Gebeyehou, the common goal that binds every one in the country is Ethiopiawinet, i.e., to belong to one nation called Ethiopia. The following presentation by Ato Sioum explains that Ethiopia is a model nation of minorities that is a composite fabric of more than 77 ethnic groups. Click on the image below to view the 3-page presentation:
The recent lawless action of Ethiopian Sports Federation North America’s (ESFNA) executive committee in reversing a decision by the board to invite Birtukan Mideksa as a guest of honor has drawn the attention of a number of Ethiopian groups and concerned Ethiopians who have started to take a closer look at the 25-year-old organization. Ethiopian Review, on its part, has launched an investigation into ESFNA’s activities. Our investigation so far has uncovered the following. (We have also contacted the FBI with a request for investigation. Click here to read.)
1. The ESFNA 9-member executive committee is simply in the service of billionaire businessman Ato Al Amoudi, not the Ethiopian community in North America. ESFNA’s top decision-making body, the 27-member board that represents the soccer teams in the U.S. and Canada, has been stripped of its authority by Al Amoudi’s top aid Abnet Gebremeskel through bribes to some of its members and intimidation by a gang of thugs led by Ayaya Arega, Sebsebe Assefa and Demis Lema (aka Arawit).
Al Amoudi (center) wearing a t-shirt with Woyanne logo; top aid Abnet Gebremeskel (left)
2. Those executive committee (EC) members who are {www:subservient} to Abnet are given wads of cash, free plane ticket to fly to Ethiopia and stay at Sheraton Hotel for free up to 2 months per year. Those who try to carry out their responsibilities as board members are physically threatened by Ayaya and his thugs. The chairman, Mekonnen Demisiew, is the Girma Woldegirogis of ESFNA. For example, when he chairs meetings, Ayaya or one of the thugs simply snatch away the microphone from him and order him what to say or not to say.
3. Attendance has been declining drastically at the ESFNA annual events during the past 5 years. July 2010 was the worst yet. That seems to be fine with Al Amoudi and his Woyanne junta as long as Ethiopians who oppose the ruling party do not control this potentially powerful organization that can bring together tens of thousands of people from all backgrounds.
Ayaya Arega
4. ESFNA is currently facing a lawsuit that was filed at the Los Angeles Superior Court by its former auditor Assfaw Teferi.
5. ESFNA has not been audited by an independent auditor for over 20 years. A few years ago, when some ESFNA members led by the late Dr WM Akalou tried to clean up house, they had discovered that at least $40,000 was missing in one incident alone. The treasurer, who is part of the Ayaya gang, admitted that he took the money and was forced to resign. But soon after that, the stealing continued. It is not unusual for sacks of money to disappear following soccer matches and music concerts.
Arawit
6. Al Amoudi gave over $700,000 to the ESFNA so far, but it is not clear how the money was used.
7. Ayaya and Arawit have escaped from Ethiopia after allegedly orchestrating the savage beating and attempted murder of The Reporter editor-in-chief Amare Aregawi. They attempted to kill Amare after The Reporter begun publishing investigative reports about how Al Amoudi is manipulating the Ethiopian banking system. One of the suspects in the attempted murder is Arawit, who is employed by Abnet through Ayaya. Currently, Arawit is living inside a $3,000-per-month luxury apartment on Massachusetts Ave., Washington DC. All his living expenses are being paid for by Abnet, on top of hefty allowance.
8. While objecting to naming Birtukan Mideksa as a guest of honor, the Ayaya gang has forced ESFNA to name Al Amoudi as permanent honorary president of the ESFNA. As we all know, Al Amoudi is an active member and “election” campaigner of Woyanne.
9. For Al Amoudi’s Ayaya gang, ESFNA is a cash cow that they are milking at will. At one point, the Federation was generating up to $3 million in revenue at the one-week annual event. However, much of the one disappears without a trace. The players are forced to buy their own soccer gear (uniform, shoes, etc.) and some times they raise funds from their local community.
Al Amoudi aid and the real boss of ESFNA Abinet Gebremeskel who lives and acts like a mafia boss
10. It must be noted that most of the ESFNA members are innocent Ethiopians who are being victimized by a well-financed, mafia-like group under the supervision Al Amoudi’s aid Abnet Gebremeskel. Visible and active members of the gang are Ayaya Arega, Sebsebe Asefa, Endale Tufer, Arawit, and Fassil Abebe. Another member of the group, Solomon Tekle, is facing long prison term after being convicted of heroin trafficking. Their mission is to keep the ESFNA under the control of the ruling Woyanne junta, while stealing its funds with impunity.
Ethiopian Review’s investigation of ESFNA continues. We urge any one who has any credible information to contact us at [email protected] or call 202 656 5117. What we have uncovered so far is so outrageous that we are compelled to report our finding to the FBI. Click here to read.
Addis Dimts Radio has a discussion about ESFNA on its Sunday program. Listen here (forward to 1:04:01):
