Meles Zenawi Amassing Millions in Foreign Banks

(OIN, August 8, 2000)

“Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi – like his predecessors Emperor Haile Sellasie and Marxist dictator Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam – is amassing millions in foreign banks,” Voice of Oromo Liberation (VOL) reported in its August 6, 2000 broadcast in Afaan Oromo.

According to VOL, the prime minister is stashing away cash in foreign banks under the names of his wife and Dr. Kasu Ilala, his deputy prime minister for economic affairs.  He has also recently purchased a printing business (Articraft Printing Inc.) in Kampala, Uganda, and a house in London, England under the name of his economic advisor Mr. Neway Gebre’ab. 

Furthermore, Mr. Araya Zerihun, another member of the political bureau of the TPLF, the prime minister’s governing party, has purchased a house for 1 million dollars in an upper class residential area in the state of Maryland, USA but it is unclear whether the property is owned by the prime minister or Mr. Zerihun made the purchase on his own. 

It is to be remembered that Emperor Haile Sellassie accumulated 11 billion dollars in a Swiss bank before he was deposed and eventually executed by the military junta that unseated him.  Mengistu Haile Mariam, head of the military junta that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991, is believed to have accumulated enough wealth in Harare to guarantee him a comfortable life style after he escaped to Zimbabwe. Former Deputy Prime Minister Tamrat Layne of the current regime in Ethiopia had stashed away about 8 million dollars in a Swiss bank, under the name of his “woman friend” Shadia Kassim, before he was sacked.  He was later put on trial and convicted of “abuse of power and corruption” and is currently serving jail term in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital.