Zimbabwe attorney general suspended

President Robert Mugabe suspended Zimbabwe's attorney general and appointed a three-member tribunal to investigate allegations that the state's highest law officer abused his powers, official media reported Saturday.

Sobusa Gula-Ndebele was arrested and charged with misconduct in the case of a fugitive banker on Nov. 8. But he returned to work a few days after his release from police questioning.

Misheck Sibanda, secretary to Mugabe's cabinet, said Gula-Ndebele was formally suspended effective Friday. He named Judge Chinembiri Bhunu as head of the tribunal.

"After its inquiry, the tribunal will make its recommendations to President Mugabe on whether Mr. Gula-Ndebele should remain as the country's attorney general," Sibanda said in an official announcement, the state Herald newspaper reported.

At the time of Gula-Ndebele's arrest in November it was alleged he assured banker James Mushore he would not be prosecuted on accusations of currency offenses if he returned from self-imposed exile in Britain. He allegedly met secretly with Mushore in a restaurant in Zimbabwe in September without informing authorities that the fugitive was back in the country.

Mushore was one of the nation's highest-profile fugitives and had been on the police wanted list since 2004. He was arrested in Harare on Oct. 24 and was charged with violating hard currency exchange regulations through his National Merchant Bank in Harare in 2004.

Mushore, freed on bail after several days in jail, is awaiting trial.

Several top bankers and corporate executives have fled during the country's worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, most of them accused of currency offenses. Some say the charges were engineered to silence their criticism of the government's economic policies that have led to acute shortages of food, gasoline and most basic goods as well as runaway inflation.

A single U.S. dollar fetches a record 2 million Zimbabwe dollars on the illegal black market and few transactions are done at the official exchange rate of 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars to $1.

Even the central bank has acknowledged buying hard currency at black market rates to help pay for the nation's gasoline and energy imports.

While he has not been openly critical of the government, Gula-Ndebele has refused to approve some politically related state prosecutions.

Central bank governor Gideon Gono, addressing the closing session of the ruling party's annual convention on Friday, alleged that ruling party leaders and senior government officials were among "cash barons" fueling black-market racketeering that caused acute shortages of local currency ahead of the holiday season.

Several banks in Harare were closed Saturday, saying they had no cash for withdrawals. Long lines snaked from automated teller machines programmed to dispense just 5 million Zimbabwe dollars ($2.50) to each customer — about enough to buy a scarce take-out hamburger.