The company then sold the jet, allegedly after defaulting on payments on a $6-million luxury conversion, but repurchased it before it was unveiled to the Swazi public.<\/p>\n
The court papers allege that Mswati\u2019s company part-paid for the jet, but that Kuwait and others contributed.<\/p>\n
“The donors of this magnificent gift have elected to remain anonymous.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n At the April 2012 media conference to announce the acquisition, Dlamini was reported in the local media as saying: \u201cHis majesty\u2019s government has the honour to announce to the nation that his majesty King Mswati?III \u2026 today received a gift of a DC-9 aircraft from development partners and friends of the Kingdom of Swaziland, to be for their majesties\u2019 travels abroad for engagements of national interest.<\/p>\n \u201cThe donors of this magnificent gift have elected to remain anonymous. On behalf of his majesty the king, her majesty the indlovukazi<\/em> [queen mother], the government of Swaziland and the entire Swazi nation, we thank all these donors most sincerely for this kind gesture.\u201d<\/p>\n But papers tabled by Inchatsavane in the Ontario Superior Court in February this year, in an action brought by Singapore businessman Shan Rethenam, contradict Dlamini\u2019s version.<\/p>\n The king\u2019s company states: \u201cInchatsavane purchased the aircraft on May 12 2010. It sold the aircraft \u2026 to Millers Capital Investments on December 30 2010.<\/p>\n \u201cInchatsavane remained interested in the aircraft and kept in touch with its owners over the next year. On April 20 2012 Inchatsavane purchased the aircraft back.\u201d<\/p>\n The repurchase took place six days before Dlamini\u2019s media conference.<\/p>\n “When a person presents someone with a gift, he or she does not disclose the cost involved.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The papers reveal that the DC-9 cost roughly $22.45-million. In addition to the initial purchase and the luxury conversion, this included $9.5-million for the repurchase.<\/p>\n At the 2012 media conference Dlamini stonewalled a question about the cost of the plane, saying: \u201cWhen a person presents someone with a gift, he or she does not disclose the cost involved.\u201d<\/p>\n AmaBhungane made repeated attempts to contact the prime minister to ask why he had misrepresented the transaction and whether his purpose was to conceal Mswati\u2019s extravagance. On two occasions, he answered the phone, but he said he couldn\u2019t speak because he was in a Cabinet meeting.<\/p>\n Further evidence of the secrecy surrounding the aircraft purchase comes from a record of the Standard Bank\u2019s payment for the plane to the escrow agent acting for Millers, which amaBhungane has also seen.<\/p>\n This describes the aircraft as \u201cspecial artefacts N87SG\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cN87SG\u201d was the plane\u2019s registration number at the time.<\/p>\n “Aircraft washing”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n As\u00a0 amaBhungane reported in May 2012<\/a>, elaborate efforts were also made to conceal the DC-9\u2019s origins by \u201caircraft washing\u201d \u2013 channelling the purchase through an opaque maze of offshore companies.<\/p>\n Inchatsavane\u2019s court application was in response to the grounding\u00a0of the aircraft following a court application by Rethenam, Mswati\u2019s former business partner.<\/p>\n Rethenam\u2019s company, SG Air Leasing, sold the king the plane\u2019s airframe and engines in 2010, but he alleges that Mswati paid only $1.5-million of the $11.45-million purchase price. He says he was told Kuwait paid the balance.<\/p>\n He is now claiming millions of dollars for unpaid bills relating to the aircraft\u2019s modification and other expenses.<\/p>\n According to Rethenam\u2019s court documents, Inchavatsane sold the plane to Millers in December 2010\u00a0to pay debts owed to the Canadian company doing the conversion, Goderich Aircraft, and avert the sale of the DC-9.<\/p>\n But he adds that \u201cat all material times it was the intent and understanding of the parties that Inchatsavane would be the repurchaser. The aircraft was repaired exclusively on instructions of Inchatsavane or its agents\u201d.<\/p>\n Rethenam says he “knows HMK [his majesty the king] personally. We have done business together in the past.”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Rethenam, who claims that Mswati deliberately sabotaged an iron mine in which he had an interest, has become the scourge of the Swazi monarch and his government.<\/p>\n In addition to grounding the DC-9 in Canada in February, he obtained a temporary freezing order on Mswati\u2019s assets in the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in the British Virgin Islands on September 8 this year. These include any property to the value of $7.9-million he claims Mswati owes him.<\/p>\n The Swazis have responded by denying that the king, whose wealth has been estimated at $200-million, has any assets outside Swaziland.<\/p>\n In the court papers, Rethenam says he \u201cknows HMK [his majesty the king] personally. We have done business together in the past. I usually meet HMK at his various palaces in the kingdom of Swaziland and have also spent time with [him] in Malaysia, South Africa and Dubai.\u201d<\/p>\n He says that, after the delivery of the aircraft in April 2012, his relationship with Mswati strengthened.<\/p>\n But it soured dramatically over SG Iron, an iron-mining operation at Ngwenya in Swaziland in which Mswati was made a 25% shareholder.<\/p>\n “Their intention appears to have been to avoid repaying the receivable.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Rethenam alleges on April 6 2012 \u2013 days before the repurchase of the DC-9 \u2013 Mswati demanded that the SG Iron board approve a $10-million \u201cadvanced dividend\u201d that was entered in the company\u2019s books as a \u201creceivable\u201d or loan.<\/p>\n He argues that the board could not refuse the demand because\u00a0\u201cthat would have resulted in the inability to continue doing business in the kingdom\u201d.<\/p>\n In 2014, Rethenam alleges Mswati told him that he could not repay the debt and \u201crequested whether I could assist in having the receivable retired from SG Iron\u2019s books and records\u201d.<\/p>\n He says that, when attempts to arrange a repayment fell through, Mswati used \u201cthe power of an absolute monarch\u201d by engineering the collapse of SG Iron through his personal secretary Sihle Dlamini, a member of the company\u2019s board.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir intention appears to have been to avoid repaying the receivable,\u201d Rethenam says.<\/p>\n \u201cHis majesty\u2019s appointee went as far [as] to prevent the sale of iron ore despite vessels arriving at the port to load the cargo, which had effects of starving the company of cash.<\/p>\n \u201cHMK, through his appointee, then used the artificial cash crisis as a pretext to request that SG Iron be placed under judicial management and liquidation.<\/p>\n \u201cSwaziland\u2019s judiciary then placed SG Iron into provisional liquidation. HMK then sent his army to effectively expropriate the mine.\u201d<\/p>\n Seven hundred mine employees are said to have lost their jobs.<\/p>\n Rethenam states that the \u201cexpropriation\u201d of SG Iron has given rise to a $141-million claim that is the subject of international arbitration proceedings against Swaziland.<\/p>\n This is not the first time there\u2019s been trouble over buying a jet. In 2002 the Swazi Parliament stopped the purchase of a jet after an outcry about the price.<\/p>\n The\u00a0 Mail & Guardian<\/em> recently reported\u00a0<\/a>that the Swazi government is now buying Mswati a second plane, amid signs that he seeks to upgrade to a larger aircraft.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Dlamini recently told the International Monetary Fund that Swaziland is facing a\u00a0fiscal crisis because of plunging\u00a0customs receipts.<\/p>\n The court papers of King Mswati\u2019s former business partner, Shan Rethenam, could be read as a cautionary tale about the perils of doing business with an absolute monarch.<\/p>\n They contain numerous allegations of money or loans requested by Mswati that he failed to repay and that the Singapore businessman is now claiming.<\/p>\n Rethenam claims Mswati:<\/p>\n Rethenam says he understood that the demands, made directly\u00a0or through Mswati\u2019s representatives, came with the implied\u00a0threat that noncompliance would jeopardise the mining operation.\u00a0\u2013 AmaBhungane reporter<\/em><\/p>\n * Got a tip-off for us about this story? Click here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n King Mswati III actually bought the jet claimed to be the gift of anonymous benefactors \u2013 twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30772,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4172\/revisions\/30772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
‘False promises’ from the Swazi head that wears a crown<\/h4>\n
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![](\"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/94x94.jpg\")
<\/a>The M&G<\/em> Centre for Investigative Journalism (amaBhungane) produced this story. All views are ours. See www.amabhungane.co.za <\/a> for our stories, activities and funding sources.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"