Grace Mugabe, the wife of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, owns dairy farms that sell up to a million litres of milk a year to food giant Nestlé, London's Sunday Telegraph reported.

Grace Mugabe took over six of the country's most valuable white-owned farms around 2002, the newspaper said.

Mugabe, his wife and other members of his administration are the subject of European Union and United States sanctions as a result of their controversial 29-year rule over once-prosperous Zimbabwe.

Nestlé, the multinational food company which is the largest customer of Grace Mugabe's dairy farm, is not obliged to comply with those sanctions as its headquarters are in Switzerland, the Telegraph said.

Switzerland has its own set of measures, but Nestlé insists it has not broken Swiss law.

On Saturday, the Daily Telegraph reported that Robert Mugabe himself had built up a secret personal farming empire including at least five white-owned farms from which the owners were forced out.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Grace Mugabe's properties total about 4 856 hectares, but her most important is Gushungo Dairy Estate, formerly known as Foyle Farm. It is located in Mazowe, about 10km north of Harare.

The farm is managed by Russell Goreraza, her son from her first marriage.

Her biggest customer, according to her staff and other industry insiders, is Nestlé Zimbabwe, the local subsidiary of the Swiss company, the newspaper reported.

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