[1] The 2022 data leaks from Credit Suisse appeared to confirm allegations—previously linked to American and European sanctions[2] that Rautenbach used proceeds from a mining deal to support the ZANU-PF regime of dictator Robert Mugabe, during the latter's repressive 2008 election campaign in Zimbabwe.
[5] Rautenbach's flight from fraud and corruption charges in South Africa in late 1999 (see below) coincided with the financial collapse of several of his southern African business interests.
[12] In 1998, following Mbaka Kawaya Swana Ambroise, DRC President Laurent-Désiré Kabila appointed him chief executive of the state-owned mining company, Gécamines.
Before his appointment, Wheels of Africa had held transport contracts with Gécamines, and Rautenbach's company, Ridgepointe Overseas Development Limited, had successfully managed at least three of its copper and cobalt mines, increasing their revenue.
Camec had been building a stake in Katanga Mining, but faced government opposition, at least partly due to the involvement of Rautenbach, who at the time was wanted for fraud by the South African authorities.
[40] In court papers, the state claimed that Rautenbach was linked to the murder of Yong Koo Kwon of Daewoo Motors, who had been shot dead in his car in Johannesburg in February 1999.
[44] Two months after striking the 2009 plea bargain with the NPA, Rautenberg testified for the prosecution in the corruption trial of Jackie Selebi, National Commissioner of the South African Police Service.
[48] Critics alleged that Rautenbach had been appointed to Gécamines, the Congolese state-owned mining company, at the request of the Zimbabwean ruling party, ZANU-PF – indeed, in 1999 the Guardian called the existence of such an arrangement "a widespread assumption in diplomatic circles.
"[41] The allegation, as made by a United Nations panel in 2001, was that Rautenbach had been appointed to Gécamines to help channel mining profits from the DRC to the ZANU-PF regime, in exchange for Zimbabwean military support for Kabila's forces in the Second Congo War.
[58][59] The 2022 Data Leaks at Credit Suisse appeared to confirm earlier allegations that Rautenbach had supported the Mugabe regime's campaign during the 2008 Zimbabwean elections.
[64] According to amaBhungane, local activists claim that Green Fuel has encroached on communal land in Chipinge, displacing thousands of families, without sufficient compensation.
They also claim that the firm has polluted the water, bulldozed maize fields to build a road, and failed to honour its promises to pay sugarcane growers $4 a tonne.
[65][66][67][68] Chipinge residents, supported by non-profit Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, are challenging Green Fuel's claim to the land in the courts.
The leak provided evidence of a complex offshore family trust fund, begun in 2013 when Rautenbach, while still under American sanctions, donated multimillion-dollar investments in his coal and ethanol businesses to his wife.