How to hide a mining giant in plain sight ?

 Everyone involved around Kuvimba has been keen to make one big point; businessman Kuda Tagwirei is not involved in the company.

"Tagwireyi is not involved at all; we did our due diligence," Ncube says. "All the entities in the 65% are state-owned."

Government claims that its contribution of assets accounts for the 65% in Kuvimba. However, this would suggest a valuation of all the assets has been done to give the split. There has been no such valuation.

It is easy to see why officials are so desperate to remove Kuvimba from Tagwirei. He is on the US sanctions list and any association with Kuvimba reduces the company's ability to raise capital. Tagwirei himself would prefer his companies not to be attributed to him.

However, it is difficult to place Tagwirei too far away from these companies. With no full disclosure, Kuvimba appears to be an elaborate scheme designed to protect both the interests of the state and Tagwirei himself.

This would be a remarkable role reversal. Tagwirei has long been alleged to have been used by the Zimbabwean government to circumvent financial sanctions.

First, when Sotic bought BNC, it appointed Christopher Fourie and Jozef Behr to the board. Fourie is Sotic's CEO, while Behr is the company's head of business.

Fourie, an investment banker, has served as head of mergers and acquisitions at Puma Energy, which is jointly owned by Trafigura and Sonangol, and until 2020 was a partner in Zimbabwe Tagwirei's Sakunda Holdings. Trafigura cut off Sakunda as the US prepared sanctions against Tagwirei.