April 16, 2025 | Global News Desk
A shocking revelation has emerged linking tech billionaire Elon Musk’s early wealth to an unregistered emerald mine in Zimbabwe, according to a newly surfaced interview with his father, Erol Musk.
The elder Musk made the admission during a candid conversation with a South African podcaster, contradicting Elon Musk’s longstanding public denials about benefiting from an emerald trade. In a 2019 tweet, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO had insisted, “We had no money, I had to work my way through college, ending up with $100,000 in student debt. My dad didn’t own an emerald mine.”
But Erol Musk’s remarks appear to tell a different story.
“No, I never owned a mine,” Erol admitted, “but I received rough [emeralds] from a mine called Katanga mine in Zimbabwe, from the people that I did the deal with the airplane. Elon came up to the mine with me. He was at the mine, yeah, so he knows very well.”
The implications of the statement are profound. Zimbabwe’s emerald industry has long operated under scrutiny, plagued by smuggling, labor abuses, and opaque ownership structures—especially in the 1980s and 1990s, the period Erol Musk is referencing. The Katanga mine he mentions does not appear in any publicly available corporate registries or official Zimbabwean mining records, raising serious questions about the legality of the transactions.
Erol continued:
“I used to go overseas, take a few stones with me, and then take them to the good jewelers, and then say, ‘Would you like to buy these stones?’ Because I sold them very cheaply.”
The casual description suggests a potentially illicit trade route—moving rough emeralds out of Zimbabwe and into international markets without formal export declarations or oversight. If proven, the activity could fall under violations of sanctions, smuggling laws, and unregulated trade of conflict resources.
Global analysts and legal experts are now calling for further investigation into the Musk family’s involvement in the gemstone trade.
The United Nations and international transparency watchdogs have long flagged Zimbabwean emerald mining as a sector vulnerable to exploitation and illicit enrichment.
Neither Elon Musk nor his representatives have responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
This revelation threatens to upend Musk’s carefully curated narrative of self-made success and thrusts new scrutiny on the origins of the world’s wealthiest man’s fortune.
This is a developing story.