Royal girlfriend's father in investigators' sights

Prince Harry's choice of girlfriend is causing concern. Picture / Reuters

The father of Prince Harry's girlfriend Chelsy Davy is facing financial disaster and possible imprisonment after the Zimbabwean Government announced it was investigating him for illegal currency dealing.

Charles Davy has accumulated a multimillion-dollar fortune through his big game hunting business, HHK Safaris, after it survived the wholesale seizure of white-owned farms and game reserves under the regime of Robert Mugabe.

But any protection once extended to Davy's company through his business relationship with a senior minister in the Zimbabwean President's Government seemed to have evaporated yesterday.

The country's anti-corruption minister, Paul Mangwana, said he was investigating the South African-born entrepreneur for the illegal export of large sums of foreign currency.

Davy's close links to Mugabe's Government have been the cause of unease in Britain after the two-year relationship between his 20-year-old daughter, an undergraduate at Cape Town University, and Prince Harry was made public.

Officials are known to have expressed concern that, if the love affair heads towards marriage, any links between the Royal Family and the Mugabe regime would be unthinkable.

Davy, whose company has prospered from charging mostly American clients £17,000 ($48,000) for a 24-day shooting expedition in the Zimbabwean savannah, has recently distanced himself from HHK by selling his holding in the company.

The Zimbabwe investigation is thought to have been sparked by an HHK employee, who alleged much of the firm's foreign currency earnings were being channelled outside Zimbabwe and traded illegally.

It follows remarks made to an undercover reporter for a British Sunday newspaper this month by another HHK worker in which he appeared to confirm that most of the company's earnings were diverted away from Zimbabwe into American bank accounts.

Ade Langley, a professional hunter working for HHK, told the Mail on Sunday: "Less than 20 per cent of your dollars will ever enter Zimbabwe. All the money is kept offshore."

It also appears that Davy's contacts within the Mugabe Government, chiefly Webster Shamu, the Minister for Policy Implementation, are unhappy with how he has run the affairs of the company recently.

Davy has been the subject of questions about how his business survived a purge which saw the number of white-owned businesses in Zimbabwe fall from 4500 to 350 in the past decade.

The safari owner recently issued a robust defence of his relationship with Shamu, a long-term ally of Mugabe and a shareholder in HHK, saying he considered him a personal friend and denying he had any political activity.

An HHK official, Graham Hingeston, claimed this week Davy was no longer a shareholder of the business after disposing of the equity that has helped him earn an estimated £20 million.

And Hingeston also said in an American hunting magazine that Shamu was never a joint venture investor but just a "front man" who did not own shares in the business.

Shamu, who considers himself the main pillar behind HHK Safaris' success, told the Zimbabwean press Hingeston was talking nonsense.

- INDEPENDENT