Elon Musk’s father Errol tells
ELON Musk’s dad Errol has revealed how he stumbled into buying a share in an emerald mine while on the way to the UK to sell his private jet.
Billionaire tech tycoon Elon, 51, has questioned the claim that his dad owned the mine in Zambia.
And last month he offered a million Dogecoin ($93,000 at the time) to anyone who could prove its existence.
But in an exclusive interview with The U.S. Sun, Errol provided new details on exactly how he got involved in the emerald trade.
The retired South African electromechanical engineer told how the story began when a large construction company he consulted for wanted to sell an airplane it owned.
Errol put in a “ridiculous offer” of 100,000 South African Rand (then about $50,000), which was accepted.
He explained: “It was in the mid-1980s when economic times were tough and they couldn’t get any buyers.
“It was a beautiful twin-engine Cessna Golden Eagle worth at least four times what I paid for it.”
The experienced pilot then used the plane to fly around his native South Africa as he visited construction projects he was working on.
When that work dried up he chartered out the plane until that source of revenue went by the wayside too.
In 1986 he decided to sell the plane and found a buyer in the U.K. who was willing to pay £350,000 (then around $530,000).
‘MARRIED TO MY CESSNA’
“Friends and colleagues found that hard to believe because they used to tell me that I was married to my Cessna,” Errol said.
Setting off from Johannesburg with two co-pilot friends, Errol realized while flying across Zambia that it would be too expensive to go ahead with a plan to refuel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as it was the Muslim holiday of Eid at the time.
Deciding to explore the Lake Tanganyika region of Zambia, Errol was led to a chance landing at an airfield at the tip of the lake.
MIDDLE OF NOWHERE’
“It sounds very glamorous but it was a deposit in the middle of nowhere rather than a modern mine,” Errol explained.
Errol says that although he no longer owns the plane, it is still flying and currently worth millions of rand.
He previously told The U.S. Sun last month how locals were employed to dig out emeralds deep in the Zambian bush.
The workers would bring them in for shipment to Errol in what he described as an “under the table” operation.
His business partners would then pay the locals around $2 a load, enough to feed an entire family for a month.
Errol told how the money from the emerald mine had helped him to get Elon set up in America.
He sent his son over to Canada in 1989 “with emerald money in his pocket” and the now-billionaire enrolled the following year at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, one of the top business schools in the world.
Elon has previously claimed that he arrived in Canada in 1989 with just CA$2,500 and paid his own way through college, ending with $100,000 in student debt.
Explaining why he thinks that Elon has pushed back on the emerald mine story, Errol said: “Elon’s main concern is not to appear to be a ‘trust fund kid’ who got everything given to him on a plate.
“That’s what his nay-sayers are pushing. It’s not true. Elon took risks and worked like blazes to be where he is today.
“The emeralds helped us through a very trying time in South Africa, when people were fleeing the country in droves, including his mother’s whole family, and earning opportunities were at an all-time low. That’s all.”
Earlier this year, Errol told The U.S. Sun that his son is a big fan of French emperor Napoleon and believed the internet would have been invented by the year 1900 if the legendary general hadn’t been defeated.
In September last year, The U.S. Sun revealed how Errol killed three armed intruders Clint Eastwood-style in South Africa in 1998 while his then six-year-old daughter Ali clung to his leg.
Errol said Ali later told a trauma psychologist that she felt OK about the shooting “because my dad won.”
Also last year, The U.S. Sun revealed Errol’s claim that he had fathered a second child with his stepdaughter, Jana, and that he had been asked to donate his sperm to impregnate high-class women in Colombia.
Elon did not respond to a request for comment about his father’s claims about the emerald mine.