Mugabe buys $5.7M Hong Kong home

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HONG KONG, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has bought a $5.7 million home in Hong Kong while his country faces mass unemployment, The Sunday Times of London reported.

The British newspaper said its investigation turned up Mugabe's new residence in an exclusive residential complex in Hong Kong, which it says was purchased on behalf of the president of the impoverished African nation and his wife Grace by a middleman through a company with a registered office in a tenement.

The Sunday Times said one of its reporters was grabbed by the throat by a Zimbabwean man in his 30s who lifted him off his feet when the reporter and a photographer arrived at the house. The newspaper said the reporter was later examined under police supervision at a hospital.

The Sunday Times' investigation also turned up alleged lavish spending by Grace Mugabe in Far East, including $80,000 for marble statues in Vietnam and $12,500 for a handbag in Singapore.

In Zimbabwe, meanwhile, 94 percent of the population was unemployed and 3,467 people have died in recent months from cholera, The Sunday Times said.