Mugabe, who turns 86 this month, keeps a crack team of security officials from Zimbabwe's secret service, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), who were assigned to keep him safe during his official visit to Switzerland, Italy and Denmark.
The President uses the team, as he has twice been a target of an attempted citizen's arrest, and has enemies among Zimbabwean exiles forced by economic collapse to leave and find work overseas.
According to The Times, Director-General of the CIO Happyton Bonyongwe submitted the request to the Treasury on October 1 2009, stipulating that the "allowances equivalent of 10 days must be paid in cash" to the "seven crack officers of the advance team to Switzerland".
Each officer accumulated a total of 50,000 dollars in cash, and the money was theirs to keep, a perk of the job, and they did not have to account for it on their return to Harare.
While, for his visit to Rome he paid less important members of the huge entourage were paid 2,000 dollars a day.
It is believed that the entire visit cost the cash-strapped unity government 1.4 million pounds.
In any country, 5,000 dollars a day would be considered good money, but in Zimbabwe, where most of the population lives on less than one dollar a day and a teacher or nurse earns five dollars a day, such sums are beyond people's wildest dreams. (ANI)
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