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Zimbabwe’s delegation at this month’s United Nations climate conference in Azerbaijan featured two Belarusian businessmen who have faced allegations of dubious activities in Africa, according to a U.N. list of conference attendees.
Aleksandr Zingman and Oleg Vodchits were among 21 representatives of Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife present in Baku, according to a list of COP29 participants published by the U.N. on November 11.
The list describes Zingman as the “honorable consulate of Zimbabwe in Belarus,” and as having a paid or contractual relationship with Zimbabwe’s government. Vodchits, meanwhile, is listed as an “adviser” to Zimbabwe who attended the conference as the country’s guest.
Environmental campaigners said they were surprised and concerned at the two men’s presence in the delegation to COP29, where countries that have signed the U.N.’s Convention on Climate Change negotiate new carbon emissions targets with the goal of halting global warming.
The news comes as several prominent climate experts, former U.N. officials and world leaders signed an open letter last week calling for reform of the COP annual conferences, due in part to the increasingly heavy presence of fossil fuel lobbyists and other corporate interests.
In a written response to OCCRP, Zingman’s lawyer, Daniel Delnero, confirmed that both men had attended COP29 as advisers. “Mr Zingman and Mr Vodchits offer advice and counsel to the Zimbabwe delegation regarding navigating the political and business environment of CIS countries,” Delnero said.
Memphus Bastripon/Wikimedia
Aleksandr Zingman.
Azerbaijan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, an association of former Soviet republics, as is Belarus.
Vodchits, 38, did not respond to requests for comment. Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Information and Ministry of Environment also did not respond to questions.
“I was really surprised with the news that they are part of the Zimbabwe delegation [at COP29],” Farai Maguwu, the executive director at Zimbabwe’s Center for Natural Resource Governance, told OCCRP of the two men.
Regai Tsunga, a human rights advocate and former opposition member of parliament in Zimbabwe, called their presence in the Ministry of Environment’s COP29 delegation “irregular.” “This reflects negatively on the Zimbabwe government,” he added, pointing to Zingman’s alleged ties to “unsustainable mining.”
Zingman and Vodchits made headlines in African media in 2021 after being detained for 12 days in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Zingman’s Dubai-based company, Aftrade DMCC, specified that the reason for the incident was arms dealing allegations, which Zingman strongly denied. He was released without charge. An Aftrade press release said that Zingman’s “colleague,” Oleg Vodchits, was detained alongside Zingman.
Previous reporting by OCCRP, drawing on documents accessed through the Pandora Papers leak, also found that Zingman, 57, co-owned a Zimbabwean gold mining venture, Zim Goldfields, with the son of a senior Belarusian official. Aftrade denied at the time that Zingman had any involvement with the gold venture.
“Mr. Zingman’s arrest in the DRC was politically motivated and, ultimately, he was cleared of any wrongdoing by DRC authorities after being detained and subjected to intense, unlawful interrogation for a two-week period,” Zingman’s lawyer told OCCRP. “Mr. Zingman was not charged with any crimes and does not have any involvement with the arms trade or mining industry.”
Zim Goldfields was engaged in riverbed mining until that practice was banned by Zimbabwe’s government in September 2020, for environmental reasons. Two months later, Zimbabwe’s government declared that ten illegal gold miners were feared to have been “buried alive” and that two bodies had been recovered, on the site of “Zimgold fields.” The company did not respond to the claims at the time.
In 2023, further reporting from OCCRP’s Zimbabwean partner NewsHawks detailed how the company had violated the country’s mining laws and contributed to the pollution of the Odzi and Mutare rivers. Local residents and health officials blamed a cholera outbreak in the area on the contamination of water sources, which the Zimbabwe National Water Authority said had occurred “as a result of the operations of a mining company.”
“Zim Goldfields never became operational,” Delnero told reporters. “The company was formally dissolved in 2020.” As evidence, Zingman’s lawyer shared a document showing the dissolution in 2020 of Midlands Goldfields Limited. Midlands is the U.K. company through which Zingman held a stake in Zim Goldfields, OCCRP reported in 2021.
Delnero did not share any Zim Goldfields dissolution documents, and he later added: "Mr. Zingman does not have any involvement with Zim Goldfields."
Zingman’s name has also been linked to an online disinformation campaign. In 2020, some of the thousands of fake social media accounts controlled by a notorious disinformation software promoted favorable stories about Zingman and his business in a concerted and automated campaign, OCCRP previously reported. Zingman’s lawyer said at the time that his client had never engaged in disinformation campaigns.
Last year, Africa Intelligence reported that Zingman and Vodchits had formed ties with the administration of Kenyan President William Ruto. They were invited to join an official Kenyan trade delegation to Qatar, again as advisers, according to the news site.