Published: Thursday, 3rd July, 2008 09:00
Richard Benyon's Westminster Diary
By Richard Benyon, MP for Newbury
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Newbury MP Richard Benyon
I KNOW Zimbabwe well and have been an active campaigner for change there.
I also represent an area where hundreds of displaced Zimbabweans have settled. Britain’s sanctions against Mugabe and the thugs that surround him are very muted and amount only to a travel ban on a few of the top members of the ruling ZANU PF party.
I am sickened that there are still companies in Britain and Europe that are willing to prop up this evil regime by doing business in Zimbabwe. This week I tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament condemning a Munich-based company called Giesecke & Devrient.
It has emerged that this company has been printing Mugabe’s bank notes and thereby contributing to the economic chaos and abject poverty in Zimbabwe.
I wonder how the directors of companies such as this can look at themselves in a mirror.
It is nothing less than shameful that they can take Mugabe’s shilling and directly contribute to the inflationary mayhem he is causing.
Last week I went on the airwaves to condemn another company, Anglo American.
They chose the week of the Zimbabwean Presidential election to announce a multi million dollar investment there. To be able to make such an investment they would have had to have connived with the regime at the highest level.
There will come a time when Zimbabwe needs investment from companies such as this, but to announce it at this time is a staggering misjudgement.
If western governments are not prepared to take the action they should against the evils of a regime such as Zimbabwe’s, it is time for people power.
Companies whose actions prop up Mugabe should be accountable to their shareholders.
I have raised a Freedom of Information Act request to find out if Giesecke & Devrient are doing any business with the British Government. If they are I will campaign for such arrangements to end.
- A HENLEY voter let fly at me as I delivered leaflets in last week’s by-election. After a sustained rant with no pauses about the mudslinging negative campaign “you lot have fought” I was able to point out that he had mistaken me for a Liberal Democrat. We parted as friends but with me developing a complex.
I had been described in that day’s Daily Mail as “Liberal Democrat MP Benyon”. Should I sue?
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