Billy Rautenbach, also known as Muller Conrad Rautenbach (born 23 September 1959), is a multimillionaire Zimbabwean businessman. He is known for his aggressive business tactics and is believed to have close links to ZANU-PF and the government of Robert Mugabe. However, this allegation, including the claims that he funds ZANU-PF, have not been proved. Before he was 40, Rautenbach's business empire had spread in more than a dozen African countries even as far afield as Australia and Europe earning him the nickname "Napoleon of Africa". As of 2008, Rautenbach was on a travel ban list in both the European Union and United States.[1]
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Rautenbach was wanted in South Africa where he faced hundreds of charges of alleged fraud, corruption and other crimes including his connection with his own South African company named Wheels of Africa Group in the 1990s. The group, which was the distributor for Korean car firm Hyundai in South Africa and Botswana, was liquidated in December 1999. At that time, he had property worth millions seized from him. These include a farm in the Western Cape worth more than R30 million, hunting safaris, a falcon executive jet, a bell 407 helicopter and a yacht, which have since been returned to him. The charges against Rautenbach include the theft of 1,300 cars from Hyundai, bribing customs officials and fraudulently reducing the tax liability of Wheels of Africa's subsidiaries. He fled South Africa in 1999 after justice department investigators raided his office and home. In 2009, he reached a bargain plea with the South African authorities to pay a fine of 40 million rand.
In November 1998 president Laurent-Désiré Kabila appointed Rautenbach the managing director of Gécamines, the state-owned copper-cobalt miner. Some of the more valuable Gecamines assets were transferred to a joint venture between Rautenbach's Ridgepointe International and a company controlled by DRC minister of state Pierre-Victor Mpoyo. In March 2000, Kabila replaced Rautenbach with George Forrest, owner of the Forrest Group, and stripped him of all his assets in Katanga. These included the Kambove and Kakanda processing plants, and the Kababancola Concessions including the Mukondo Mine. The assets were transferred to the Kababancola Mining Company (KMC), a joint venture between Gecamines and John Bredenkamp's Tremalt.[2]
Later Rautenbach acquired an interest in Boss Mining, which acquired the C19 and C21 mining concessions and 50% of Mukondo, some of the assets that had been given to Bredenkamp. In a February 2006 deal, Rautenbach gained about 17% of the Central African Mining & Exploration Company's (CAMEC) shares when CAMEC bought Boss.[2] In 2007 CAMEC and the owners of Tremalt decided to combine their Mukondo assets into a new holding company. Billy Rautenbach would be excluded from ownership in the new company due to the hostile relations that had developed between him and the DRC government.[3]
It has been reported in trade publication Metal Bulletin that Rautenbach is thought to still be involved with marketing and moving cobalt for the CAMEC operations in Africa. CAMEC is a company based in London however has large operations in countries such as Zimbabwe, many of the deals it has won in the region are clouded by corruption allegations of which in numerous occasions Rautenbach can be directly linked. Rautenbach was a major shareholder in Camec until the company's sale to Eurasian Natural Resources Corp in September 2009. CAMEC recently sold 95.40% of its shares to the Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation. CAMEC is currently under restructuring and is no longer trading under the CAMEC brand. [1]</ref>
Rautenbach was added to the EU blacklist in January 2008, and the US blacklist towards the end of 2008 for his alleged involvement with the Mugabe government. It is alleged he has aided Robert Mugabe’s government financially, regardless of current international sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe to limit Robert Mugabe’s grip of power. A noticeable proportion of the funds made available to Robert Mugabe were used to pay his security forces help keep him in power. Mugabe, grateful for financial support often returned the favour to Rautenbach and similar financiers in exchange for dubious and lucrative drilling and mining deals with companies based in countries such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and so on, both of which could be seen as having a lack of regulation in place therefore making it easier to transfer funds to Zimbabwe. He currently owns the Volvo franchise in Zimbabwe, the country's largest freight company and vast tracts of agricultural land, which includes land used for crocodile rearing.
In a 2009 Dispatches TV documentary "Bankrolling Mugabe" on Britain's Channel 4,[4] he was described as corrupt by opposition politicians and was shown to have interests in the mining industry of Zimbabwe and linked to moves to remove black farmers from their grazing land.
Rautenbach resides in Zimbabwe, on his estate in Mazowe 40 miles north of the capital Harare. In 2007, on a business trip in Lubumbashi, Congo, he was immediately arrested and consequently deported back to Zimbabwe for his alleged actions in South Africa , Rautenbach has denied such allegations and said "he left for Zimbabwe on his own accord". He used to be a rally driver, and his son Conrad Rautenbach is a rally driver.[5]