sound familiar: the king himself is the economy

Eswatini is home to 1.2 million people and its economy is heavily dependent on its larger neighbors. Unemployment is high: Nearly 60% of Swazis under 25 are out of work. And, at 53 years as of 2021, life expectancy for men was among the lowest in the world. For women, it was 61 years. Those poor health outcomes are driven by the world’s highest prevalence of HIV among adults: Around 26% of the adult population is living with HIV.

 

Swazi Secrets

The tiny southern African kingdom of Eswatini — once known as Swaziland — has evolved against a constant backdrop: the monarchy.

While most of the population of 1.2 million faces grinding poverty, King Mswati III and members of his expansive family flaunt their wealth, from flashy bespoke watches to fleets of luxury cars.👇

The current king, Mswati III, took the throne in 1986 at age 18. Now in his fifties, he’s Africa’s last absolute monarch. The size of the royal family is a secret, but Mswati III reportedly has 11 wives and more than 30 children. The family has earned a reputation for its luxurious lifestyle, despite high poverty rates and unemployment in the tiny country it rules.

Now, an unprecedented leak from inside the Eswatini Financial Intelligence Unit reveals how the king’s broken promises and his inner circle have enabled suspicious money to flow through the landlocked country and beyond.

Swazi Secrets is based on more than 890,000 leaked internal records from the EFIU shared with ICIJ by the nonprofit Distributed Denial of Secrets. ICIJ coordinated a team of 38 journalists across 11 countries to explore the documents, which include bank records, police investigation reports, court affidavits and transcripts, and confidential exchanges between government agencies in the region.

The investigation highlights the extraordinary role of Mswati III and some of his key allies in supporting a new bank in a years-long tussle with the regulator, the Central Bank of Eswatini. 

It also exposes how a “special economic zone” — touted as a way to repair the country’s tattered economy — became a ghost town home to two phantom gold refineries channeling millions of dollars to Dubai.

“When we talk of the Swazi economy we can say the king himself is the economy, because Swaziland is emblematic of a country where the entire economy is actually captured by royal interests,” said one human rights activist, who asked not be named for fear of retribution.

• READ: How international gold dealers exploited a tiny African kingdom’s economic dream
• READ: The central bank in a tiny African country tried to block a suspicious banking venture. Then the king’s allies intervened.
• ABOUT: About the Swazi Secrets investigation
• FAQS: Answers to questions about the leak, ICIJ’s reporting, and more