Zimbabwean whistle-blower Edward Chindori-Chininga dies in car crash

The chairman of a parliamentary committee, which said tens of millions of dollars of revenue paid to the government by a diamond company is missing, has died in a car crash.

Edward Chindori-Chininga, a lawmaker for President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front in the north of the country, died late on Wednesday when his Jeep Cherokee collided with a tree, said Jones Mashakada, who farms corn and cattle in Guruve South. The death was also reported by state-controlled newspaper The Chronicle.

"What is strange is that the airbag didn't work and the windscreen isn't broken," said Mashakada, who saw the vehicle.

The June 12 report from the committee led by Chindori-Chininga said that while national budgets this year and last showed that the Treasury had received US$82 million in revenue from four diamond companies, Mbada Diamonds had paid the government US$293 million since it started mining in 2009. The other firms refused to give the inter-parliamentary committee information, the committee said.

"There are very serious discrepancies between what government receives from the sector and what the diamond mining companies claim to have remitted to Treasury," it said.

Police spokeswoman Charity Charamba did not answer calls to her phone. The state-owned Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation cited Ephraim Nyakata, a police superintendent, as confirming the death.