Portugal/Mozambique: Paper manufacturer sues firms claiming it owes them money

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Portugal/Mozambique: Paper manufacturer sues firms claiming it owes them money

2:39 CAT | 11 Aug 2020

File photo: Lusa

Portugal’s largest pulp and paper manufacturer, The Navigator Company, and a subsidiary, Portucel Mozambique, have filed lawsuits in Portugal and Mozambique against forest service companies that have claimed to be their creditors and demanded damages in the African country, according to documents seen on Tuesday by Lusa.

According to a statement from the Portuguese company that Lusa has seen, The Navigator Company on 24 July lodged a criminal complaint alleging “slanderous accusation and offence against a legal person” with pulbic prosecutors in the Department of Investigation and Penal Action (DIAP) in Lisbon against Sociedade Moçambicana de Consultoria e Prestação de Serviços (MOPS), FAAN – Aluguer de Equipamentos and Earth Moving Contractors (EMC).

“Portucel Mozambique first and now also Navigator are the target of an attempt at extortion, so serious that they have been forced to react criminally and judicially against those entities, both in Portugal and Mozambique,” reads the statement.

In early March, Portucel Mozambique had simiarly filed a “criminal complaint against several legal representatives” of the three companies with the Maputo City Prosecutor’s Office due to “suspicion of crimes of extortion, forgery and defamation.”

In March 2019, the president of the Mozambican Society of Construction Services (SMOPS), on behalf of a “consortium of creditors” also composed of FAAN and EMC, announced that they would pursue a criminal case in Portugal against The Navigator Company, citing losses of more than $50 million (€42.4 million at current exchange rates) due to alleged breach of contract, late payment and equipment and damage caused during the provision of forestry services to the company in Mozambique.

The Portuguese group, however, argues that the three companies have not demonstrated or justified “any credit” and states that Portucel Mozambique “invited those alleged creditors to submit this matter to the Mozambican courts”, something that SMOPS, EMC and FAAN, it said, “never took the initiative of doing.”

The same happened in February of this year, when the three companies held Portugal’s securities markets regulatory, the CMVM, responsible for losses and alleged financial fraud on the part of Navigator, with the latter rejecting the existence of any outstanding debts.

In its latest statement, Navigator says that “Portucel Mozambique has no debts to the companies that claim to be its creditors, nor to any other entities, and since mid-2017 no services have been provided by these entities, and all invoices issued by these service providers have been settled.”

It adds that “despite the widespread threats, since at least 2018”, the three companies “have not, to date, filed any criminal complaint or civil action in Mozambique, Portugal or any other country.”

The Portuguese company also says that FAAN’s challenge to the initial petition presented by Portucel Mozambique contains “false documents reporting alleged debts of Portucel Mozambique to the INSS” – Mozambique’s National Social Security Institute – that were supposedly sent by “an alleged Liquidation Commission of Portucel Mozambique, behind which is the main partner of SMOPS.”

Navigator says that it “will continue to use all the judicial mechanisms at its disposal” to “enforce its good name against all the slanderous accusations” made against it.

Since 2009, the Portuguese company has been developing a $2.5-billion eucalyptus plantation of some 360,000 hectares in Mozambique.

Source: Lusa