Billy Rautenbach
| Billy Rautenbach | |
|---|---|
| Born |
23 September 1959 Harare, Zimbabwe |
| Residence | Harare |
| Known for | "Napoleon of Africa" |
Billy Rautenbach, also known as Muller Conrad Rautenbach (born 23 September 1959), is a wealthy Zimbabwean businessman. In the mid 1990s, Rautenbach's business empire had spread to more than a dozen African countries earning him the nickname "Napoleon of Africa". He also owns companies in Australia and the UK.
Billy Rautenbach's business ventures involves trucking, car manufacturing, farming and mining in several African countries. After expanding the family business, Wheels of Africa, into the largest trucking company on the African continent, he turned to car assembling, greatly increasing the market share of Hyundai in South Africa. Circa 2004, tax evasion charges were soon leveled against him by the South African authorities resulting in asset forfeiture worth 50 million rands, which forced him to leave South Africa. The National Prosecuting Authority failed to secure a conviction and withdrew the charges two years later. Although his personal assets were returned, the legal battles against tax evasion charges cost him the Hyundai business and earned him a lot of negative publicity. Rautenbach continued to have substantial mining activities in South Africa. In 2006, Central African Mining & Exploration Company plc (CAMEC), a company Rautenbach became involved with, and listed on the , acquired various mining operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
With the assistance of his father's trucking business, contacts in transporting minerals, and using innovative mining techniques, he successfully mined state owned companies and attracted the attention of the government. With the eye of an outsider, he developed a different technique and out-mined the state company in a very short period of time: “We did it very selectively. We slowed down the process and picked it out in very high grade and with very little investment.” Billy's unorthodox approach was highly successful, and showed the massive inefficiency of the state-run enterprises. In 1998, Laurent Kabila offered Billy a chance to lead state-owned Gecamines. Despite initial reluctance, he finally accepted, and in doing so, successfully turned around the fortunes of the company by cutting costs and improving efficiencies. However, the rebel-infested country began to create trouble for the Congolese government who, in a search of funds, issued allegations of misappropriation of corporate assets. Allegations also surfaced that he was financing the Congo war. Rautenbach has denied any allegations of financing the DRC war, logically stating that he was in business in the Congo long before the war broke out: “I started mining in the Congo about a year before the war started. So all of a sudden, the war is there because of me. It's unbelievable." “We were very active there in getting the production going, in turning around things. We were possibly affecting people's commercial interests ... I set up a little mine there, and out-produced the major cobalt producers in the world in one year. They spend billions of dollars putting up a plant and I come there as a farmer – me and my dad – and we got the stuff out of the ground.” However, stories continued circulating: allegations that he was Mugabe's right-hand man, that he had bribed Kabila into securing his mining concessions, and that his mines were financing Zimbabwe's soldiers in the DRC. To date, there have not been any substantiation on claims of Billy Rautenbach’s links to Robert Mugabe and the European Union struck him off the targeted sanctions list in February 2012.
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