
ROBERT Mugabe has built a secret farming empire of land seized from at least five white-owned businesses, an investigation by Britain's Daily Telegraph has found.
The discovery of the 4050-hectare holding worth $A3.7 million is the first evidence of how he personally gained from land seizures that started in 2000.
More than 4000 commercial farmers had their land taken in the drive that destroyed Zimbabwe's agriculture industry, the bedrock of the economy.
The country, now ruled under a power-sharing deal between Mr Mugabe and his rival Morgan Tsvangirai, desperately needs to rebuild its shattered economy.
But Mr Mugabe's farm holding is an obstacle to resurrecting commercial agriculture, experts say, as an audit of land ownership before structural reforms would expose his control of the land.
The Daily Telegraph seem to be a little slow off the mark. Their cutting edge investigative journalism has spotted a practice that has been going on for nearly 30 years.
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