SW Radio Africa (London)
Alex Bell
13 October 2008
The business partner of one of Robert Mugabe's controversial associates has been deported from Canada to the United States where he faces myriad criminal charges, including racketeering, conspiracy and fraud.
Until his capture, Alexander Legault worked from a number of downtown Montreal offices that he shared with Mugabe's associate Ari Ben-Menashe. Legault arrived in Canada in 1982 and was soon arrested following a US extradition request.
The Superior Court of Quebec dismissed the request on grounds that evidence of fraud tendered against him was insufficient. In 1986, a US federal grand jury indicted Legault on new charges, including fraud and the use of fictitious names. According to court documents, Legault is alleged to have helped defraud the Egyptian government of US$7 million by participating in a bogus export scheme that involved frozen chickens.
In the mid-1990s Legault's immigration lawyer, Richard Kurland, introduced him to Ben-Menashe, a former spy and arms dealer who maintains what he calls a "personal relationship" with Mugabe. Ben-Menashe has for years conducted business on behalf of the brutal Mugabe regime, attempting to "improve" it's image, or so he claims.
In 2001 he conspired from is Canadian office with business partner Legault to incriminate Morgan Tsvangirai in a presidential assassination plot. In Harare Tsvangirai was accused of treason and jailed. Ben-Menashe was the prosecution's star witness, despite the trial judge calling him "rude, unreliable and contemptuous."
Despite his partner's deportation, Ben-Menashe has not been charged with any crime and authorities in the United States have expressed no interest in him. Canadian officials have also appeared unperturbed by his activities and he has not been accused of harbouring a fugitive.
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