Defence Minister Israel Katz

The Kenyan-born Pattni knows better than anyone how to smuggle gold worth millions of dollars — and get away with it. In the 1990s, his firm Goldenberg International was at the centre of a giant scandal that robbed Kenya of $600mn — 10 percent of its GDP. Then President Daniel Arap Moi had allowed Pattni to export Kenyan gold at a time when the East African country was facing a Western aid embargo. Instead, Pattni allegedly used his license to smuggle Congolese gold through Kenya. He was charged but never convicted.Al Jazeera’s undercover reporters discovered that Pattni has now moved his operations to Dubai and is smuggling gold from all over Africa, mostly from Zimbabwe. He was quick to boast of his influence, showing our reporters photos with a galaxy of African leaders — from former Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi to ex-Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe.

Pattni calls himself Brother Paul — he now runs a church. But he is a “criminal mastermind,” said Lakshmi Kumar, policy director at the Washington DC-based think tank, Global Financial Integrity, which tracks illicit financial flows and money laundering.Do you have information on money laundering or want to share another tip? Contact Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit on +974 5080 0207 (WhatsApp/Signal), or find other ways to reach out on ourYet perhaps, to Pattni, his roles as pastor and smuggler aren’t contradictory. At the end of one of his conversations with the undercover reporters, where he outlined how he could help them launder more than $100mn, he said: “I don’t know how you came to me, but I think God must have sent you.”

When confronted with the evidence gathered against him as a part of the Al Jazeera investigation, Pattni denied any criminal wrongdoing in Kenya and emphasised that he had never been convicted in relation to his activities in that country. He denied involvement in any kind of money laundering or sanctions busting or offering to deal with funds he knew originated from illegal sources. He said that when he met with our undercover team, he thought he was meeting with an investor who wanted to sell a stake in hotel businesses and “to divest of a portfolio in China into gold buying and mining in Zimbabwe”.One of Zimbabwe’s most influential diplomats, Angel was appointed a special envoy and ambassador-at-large to Europe and the Americas by President Emmerson Mnangagwa in 2021.

His task: to bring investments to Zimbabwe’s collapsing economy. And if Angel is to be believed, how the money enters the country doesn’t matter.

He offered to Al Jazeera’s undercover reporters that he could use his diplomatic cover to carry large volumes of dirty cash into Zimbabwe as part of a laundering operation also involving gold smuggling. And he repeatedly claimed that Mnangagwa was aware of his schemes. “I can call the president now, not tomorrow, now and put him on speaker, it’s not an issue,” he said. “We are the government.”Researchers said they verified more than 200 examples of Israeli soldiers deliberately destroying buildings and street networks in all four of the refugee camps with armoured bulldozers reducing civilian roads to barely passable piles of exposed earth and rubble.

Civilian property, including parked vehicles, food carts and agricultural buildings, such as greenhouses, were also destroyed during Israeli military operations, they said.Described as a ‘deeply saturated teal’ colour, humans can only see it with the help of laser technology.

A team of scientists claims to have discovered a new colour that humans cannot see without the help of technology.The researchers based in the United States said they were able to “experience” the colour, which they named “olo”, by firing laser pulses into their eyes using a device named after the Wizard of Oz.