HARARE: The wife of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has sued a Lebanese businessman for failing to deliver a $1.35-million diamond ring she ordered for her wedding anniversary, state media reported Wednesday.
“First lady Dr. Grace Mugabe is suing fugitive businessman Mr.Jamal Joseph Ahmed for $1.23 million (1.05 million euros) over a diamond ring deal that went sour last year,” The Herald newspaper said.
“In breach of the agreement, Mr.Ahmed failed to deliver the ring, triggering a legal wrangle.”
In 2015, Grace Mugabe placed an order for a 100-carat diamond ring worth $1.35 million to mark the anniversary of her wedding to the 93-year-old leader.
“The plaintiff wanted to purchase a unique diamond ring for her wedding anniversary celebrations,” said court documents seen by The Herald.
“The defendant tendered a diamond ring worth $30,000 and naturally, the plaintiff refused to take possession of an inferior ring.”
Grace Mugabe demanded a refund but Ahmed paid back just $120,000.
In court documents filed last year, Ahmed said he had offered to repay the money in instalments and claimed he had already paid back $150,000.
In January Ahmed went to court to stop Grace Mugabe from seizing his properties over the diamond ring spat.
Grace Mugabe has however denied attempting to seize Ahmed’s properties, saying police had been guarding his premises because he was wanted for alleged crimes.
The Lebanese businessman holds a Zimbabwean permanent residence permit, but no longer lives in southern African country.
Ahmed also claimed to have received threats from officials from Zimbabwe’s spy agency — the Central Intelligence Organization — as well from Grace herself and a son from her first marriage, Russell Goreraza. She has denied the allegation.
Grace, 52, married Mugabe in 1996. She now heads the ruling ZANU-PF party women’s league.
She has said that she has the right to rule the country like any other Zimbabwean and is now seen to be among those manoeuvering to replace her husband.
Mugabe’s wife sues over $1.35-million diamond ring: report
Mugabe’s wife sues over $1.35-million diamond ring: report
Power outages hit Ukraine and Moldova as Kyiv struggles against the winter cold
- Outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova
- Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions
KYIV: Emergency power cuts swept across several Ukrainian cities as well as neighboring Moldova on Saturday, officials said, amid a commitment from the Kremlin to US President Donald Trump to pause strikes on Kyiv as Ukraine battles one of its bleakest winters in years.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova.
The failure “caused a cascading outage in Ukraine’s power grid,” triggering automatic protection systems, he said.
Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, in the center and northeast of the country respectively. The outage cut water supplies to the Ukrainian capital, officials said, while the city’s subway system was temporarily suspended because of low voltage on the network.
Moldova also experienced major power outages, including in the capital Chisinau, officials said.
“Due to the loss of power lines on the territory of Ukraine, the automatic protection system was triggered, which disconnected the electricity supply,” Moldova’s Energy Minister Dorin Junghietu said in a post on Facebook. “I encourage the population to stay calm until electricity is restored.”
Weaponizing winter
The large-scale outage followed weeks of Russian strikes against Ukraine’s already struggling energy grid, which have triggered long stretches of severe power shortages.
Moscow has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat, light and running water over the course of the war, in a strategy that Ukrainian officials describe as “weaponizing winter.”
While Russia has used similar tactics throughout the course of its almost four-year invasion of Ukraine, temperatures throughout this winter have fallen further than usual, bringing widespread hardship to civilians.
Forecasters say Ukraine will experience a brutally cold period stretching into next week. Temperatures in some areas will drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
Trump said late Thursday that President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a temporary pause in targeting Kyiv and other Ukrainian towns amid the extreme weather.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this ... extraordinary cold,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Putin has “agreed to that,” he said, without elaborating on when the request to the Russian leader was made.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a query seeking clarity about the scope and timing of any limited pause.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed Friday that Trump “made a personal request” to Putin to stop targeting Kyiv until Sunday “in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations.”
Talks are expected to take place between US, Russian and Ukrainian officials on Feb. 1 in Abu Dhabi. The teams previously met in late January in the first known time that officials from the Trump administration simultaneously met with negotiators from both Ukraine and Russia. However, it’s unclear many obstacles to peace remain. Disagreement over what happens to occupied Ukrainian territory, and Moscow’s demand for possession of territory it hasn’t captured, are a key issue holding up a peace deal, Zelensky said Thursday.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on social media Saturday that he was in Miami, where talks between Russian and US negotiators have previously taken place.
Russia struck Ukrainian energy assets in several regions on Thursday but there were no strikes on those facilities overnight, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.
In a post on social media, Zelensky also noted that Russia has turned its attention to targeting Ukrainian logistics networks, and that Russian drones and missiles hit residential areas of Ukraine overnight, as they have most nights during the war.
Trump has framed Putin’s acceptance of the pause in strikes as a concession. But Zelensky was skeptical as Russia’s invasion approaches its fourth anniversary on Feb. 24 with no sign that Moscow is willing to reach a peace settlement despite a US-led push to end the fighting.
“I do not believe that Russia wants to end the war. There is a great deal of evidence to the contrary,” Zelensky said Thursday.
