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Monday 10 January 2011

LUTFO SCANDAL: MORE DETAILS

More information is circulating about Lutfo Dlamini, Swaziland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, and the scandal involving missing cash from Kuwait.


As I reported earlier today (10 January 2011) Lutfo Dlamini is accused of stealing about US$1 million from Kuwait, intended for King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch.


One version of events, published on the Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN) Forum today, has it that Lutfo, together with Phesheya Dlamini, the Swazi Ambassador to Kuwait, stole the money that had been given Swaziland by the Kuwait monarchy.


The money was said to be a donation to the kingdom after the Swazi King’s personal plea to the Kuwait Royal Family. The money was reportedly ‘to help alleviate the country’s economic crisis in order to prevent a possible uprising by the country's masses’.


The money sent by the Kuwaitis was entrusted to the Minister and the Ambassador who decided to pocket it themselves.


The King found out about it when his daughter, who is married into the Kuwaiti Royal Family, returned from Kuwait to Swaziland for Christmas holidays and she relayed a message from her father-in-law to the King expressing surprise that the King had not thanked him for his gift.


It is said that Lutfo enlisted the help of the Queen Mother to get him off the hook with the King.


The Queen Mother sent the King’s sister, Princess Senanile, to offer an apology to the King.


The King rejected this apology.


So what happens next? It is said the culprits were waiting for King Mswati to emerge from his annual seclusion before they would discover their fate. That seclusion ended last week, so they (and the rest of us) shouldn’t have to wait much longer.

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