“It was kind of a massive cascade of people,” Garcia recalls.

“You want gold, gold we can do it right now, we can make the call right now, and it’s done,” Angel told Al Jazeera’s reporters. “It will land in Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe can’t touch it too until I get to my house. So, there can be a diplomatic plan.”“So, it is a very, very easy thing,” he said.

Angel made the offer during an operation that was part of ‘Gold Mafia’, an investigation into several gold-smuggling gangs in Southern Africa, with Zimbabwe and South Africa as key hubs.The investigation reveals how these gangs have turned Western sanctions meant to target Zimbabwe’s government into an opportunity to smuggle large quantities of gold and launder hundreds of millions of dollars through a complex web of companies and bribes.Al Jazeera reporters, posing as Chinese nationals who were looking to launder large sums of money, were offered several ways to remove all stains of corruption from their dirty cash.

Among those mechanisms was the use of Angel’s diplomatic clout. Officially, the pastor-diplomat is tasked with finding investors to come to Zimbabwe. However, Angel made it clear that he was willing to help smuggle gold and launder money.Zimbabwe needs dollars because the country’s own currency has lost its value in international trade due to hyperinflation. A commodity like gold is a good way to earn dollars, but international sanctions imposed on the country make it difficult for the government to export gold because of the additional scrutiny on officials in power.

“So you have to figure out other ways to do that,” Karen Greenaway, a former FBI investigator who tracks international money laundering schemes, told Al Jazeera. One way around: individual gold miners, who don’t face those restrictions.

This scenario makes Zimbabwe fertile ground for money launderers who can help the country earn dollars in exchange for gold.people made the long journey to south Gaza, many walking tens of kilometres in the scorching summer heat to reach a newly established aid distribution centre run by the Israeli- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Among them was Walaa Abu Sa’da (35), mother of three children who decided to go to Rafah by herself.“My children were on the verge of starving. No milk, no food, not even baby formula. They cried day and night, and I had to beg neighbours for scraps,” Abu Sa’da told

While the previous United Nations-led distribution network operated about 400 sites across the Strip, the, guarded by armed private security contractors working for a US company, has set up only four “mega-sites” for Gaza’s population of about two million Palestinians.