Mozambique: Man arrested for involvement in kidnapping of the two businessmen rescued last week
“Hidden debts” trial: 2 September 2021 – AIM reports
7:35 CAT | 02 Sep 2021
File photo: Noticias
- Defendant admits to receiving millions of dollars from Privinvest, but can’t remember how he spent it
Bruno Langa, a businessman who is one of 19 defendants on trial in Maputo in the case of Mozambique’s largest ever financial scandal, the case of the so-called “hidden debts”, on Thursday admitted to receiving a payment of 8.5 million US dollars from the Abu Dhabi based group, Privinvest.
He claimed that this obvious bribe was a payment for “consultancy work”. He had signed his contract with Privinvest in January 2013, and received the money on 26 March 2014. So he had received 8.5 million dollars for no more than 14 months of work.
Langa claimed his consultancy work was concerned with real estate and the hotel industry. He told the court that Privinvest was interested in investing in hotels and condominiums in Mozambique. Yet, of all the hotels and condominiums built in recent years, none are owned by Privinvest.
When Judge Efigenio Bapista asked Langa to prove that he had done consultancy work, Langa said the proof was the payment. “Nobody pays, if you don’t do any work for them”, he claimed.
The money was deposited in an account opened by Langa in the First Gulf Bank in Abu Dhabi. Exactly like the account of his close friend Ndambi Guebuza, oldest son of the former Mozambican President, Armando Guebuza, this account was opening using a residence visa obtained under false pretenses.
Langa’s application for a visa describes him as resident in Abu Dhabi, and working as a “diesel agent mechanic” for Logistics Offshore, part of the Privinvest group, none of which is or was true. When Baptista asked if he is a mechanic, Langa admitted he is not, but repeatedly refused to describe the visa application as untrue.
His excuse for travelling on a false document was that he had not personally dealt with the application. The paperwork was done by Privinvest.
“I don’t know why they wrote that”, said Langa. “But it’s your document”, retorted the judge.
Asked how he had spent the 8.5 million dollars, Langa clammed up. He either refused to answer Baptista’s questions about the money, or claimed “I don’t remember”.
Under Mozambican legislation, the only questions defendants are obliged to answer are those about their identity. They can decline to answer questions about anything else, or even tell lies.
But the court has a treasure trove of emails, bank statements and other documents which show exactly how Langa and the other defendants used the money from Privinvest bribes. Millions of dollars and rands poured out of Langa’s Abu Dhabi account to buy houses in Mozambique and South Africa, to acquire a herd of cattle and assorted agricultural equipment, and to buy luxuries such as a Ferrari sports car.
Langa said he could not remember any of this, not even a debt owed by his sister, which he had repaid.
Baptista became annoyed when Langa began to show obvious contempt for the court, and even to interrupt him. “You owe respect to the court”, said the judge. “This is not a place where you can show off how impolite you are. And when I’m speaking, you keep quiet”.
Langa claimed he knew nothing about the Privinvest project for protecting Mozambique’s Exclusive Economic Zone, though the prosecution argues that is the real reason why Privinvest paid huge bribes to Langa, Ndambi Guebuza and other defendants.
That project eventually mutated into Proindicus, the first of three fraudulent companies which obtained 2.2 billion dollars from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia, on the basis of illegal loan guarantees issued by the Guebuza government and signed by the then Finance Minister, Manuel Chang.
Privinvest became the sole contractor for the three companies, and provided them with assets such as patrol boats, fishing boats and radars, sold at vastly inflated prices. The independent audit undertaken in 2017 showed that Privinvest had over-invoiced Mozambique by about 714 million dollars. It is thus hardly surprising that Privinvest had hundreds of millions of dollars available to use in bribes and kickbacks.
- Langa’s story repeatedly contradicted y documents he signed
Bruno Langa, one of the 19 defendants appearing before the Maputo City Court on charges arising from the scandal of Mozambique’s “hidden debts”, insisted on Thursday that he had nothing to do with the project of the Abu Dhabi-based Privinvest group to provide equipment for the protection of the Mozambican Exclusive Economic Zone.
Langa, sometimes described as an intelligence agent, calls himself a businessman. He is also a close friend of Ndambi Guebuza, the oldest son of former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza. The prosecution believes that Privinvest was particularly interested in using this friendship to reach President Guebuza via Ndambi, and to interest him in the Privinvest scheme.
Langa said Privinvest had hired him as a consultant for prospective businesses in hotels and real estate. But prosecuting attorney Sheila Marrengula pointed out that all the documents in the court’s possession make it clear that Privinvest’s main concern was with the project to protect the Exclusive Economic Zone. These documents do not so much as mention investment in hotels.
Marrengula cited Langa’s initial interrogation by Assistant Attorney-General Alberto Paulo on 13 January 2019, when he had said that initially a brochure on the Privinvest scheme should have been sent to Guebuza via the Security and Intelligence Service (SISE). But when nothing happened, Langa was asked to contact Ndambi Guebuza, so that he would speak to his father about the scheme.
Ndambi made it clear that he wanted payment for this service, and Privinvest, acting through its main Mozambican contact, Teofilo Nhangumele, guaranteed that money would be forthcoming. When informed of the Privinvest project, Guebuza said it was of interest to the country.
According to the same record of the interrogation, Langa confirmed that SISE paid for a visit to the Privinvest facilities in the German port of Kiel. Those on this delegation were Nhangumele, Langa, Ndambi Guebuza and Antonio do Rosario, the SISE head of economic intelligence.
Although three of the four member delegation were, in theory, private citizens, they were treated as representatives of a potential client, namely the Mozambican government.
Langa told Alberto Paulo that payments were discussed, with proposals for these “fees” (the polite term for bribes) varying from ten to six million dollars each, to be paid in three instalments. But the agreement eventually reached was for payment of 50 million dollars – 33 million to Ndambi Guebuza, and 8.5 million each to Nhangumele and Langa. There were difficulties with Ndambi Guebuza, since he claimed to need much more money than the others since he had to make payments from his share to Antonio do Rosario, and to Cipriano Mutota, the head of the SISE projects and studies office, among others.
This account was very different from what Langa had told the court on Thursday morning. Asked to explain the discrepancies, Langa claimed that Alberto Paulo had threatened him. Marrengula warned him that this was “a very serious accusation” to make against a senior member of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Furthermore, Langa’s lawyer had accompanied him and he had signed the minutes of the interrogation. Langa said the lawyer had witnessed the intimidation, but did nothing to stop it, and allowed his client to sign the document.
To make matters worse for Langa, his lawyer, acting on a power of attorney signed by Langa, had submitted a document on why Langa should not be charged with any crimes – and this document told exactly the same story of the Privinvest project, the visit to Germany, and the payments made, as in the interrogation by Alberto Paulo.
When Marrengula asked how he could explain this, Langa said “I don’t know that power of attorney. I can’t explain it.
Marrengula then read out yet another document signed by Langa – the account of his interrogation by the investigating magistrate, Delio Portugal, during the preliminary hearing. This account was, in all significant details, the same as the account in Alberto Paulo’s interrogation, and in Langa’s own document explaining why he should not be charged.
Langa claimed that the account of his interrogation by Delio Portugal was a forgery. “This didn’t happen”, he exclaimed. “I don’t know how they got my signature”.
“You signed all the pages”. Marrengula pointed out.
Langa came up with an ingenious explanation for this: the signatures were genuine, he said, but the document typed above them was a fake.
“The signature is equal to mine”, said Langa – before announcing that he would answer no further questions about the documents.
- International arrest warrant for Jean Boustani
An international arrest warrant has been issued for the Lebanese businessman Jean Boustani, one of the key executives in the Abu Dhabi-based group, Privinvest, and is currently in the hands of Interpol, according to a report in Thursday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”.
Boustani is wanted in connection with Mozambique’s greatest financial scandal, the “hidden debts”. This scheme, whereby three fraudulent, security-linked companies, Proindicus, Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), obtained over 2.2 billion dollars in loans from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia, on the basis of illegal loan guarantees issued by the government of the time, led by then President Armando Guebuza, was largely orchestrated by Privinvest.
Privinvest was the main winner from the corrupt deal, since it became the sole contractor for the three companies. All the loan money was sent, not to the Maputo offices of the companies, but to Privinvest, which then provided Mozambique with vastly overpriced assets (such as fishing boats, patrol boats and radars). According to an independent audit of Proindicus, Ematum and MAM in 2017, Privinvest over-invoiced Mozambique by more than 700 million dollars.
According to United States prosecutors investigating the scandal, at least 200 million dollars of the loan money was used to pay bribes and kickbacks. Boustani handled the bribes. The Maputo City Court, currently trying 19 people for their alleged role in the “hidden debts”, has heard this week of how Boustani arranged a bribe of 50 million dollars – 33 million for Ndambi Guebuza, the oldest son of former President Guebuza, and 8.5 million each to the shadowy business figures Teofilo Nhangumela and Bruno Langa.
Judicial sources contacted by “Noticias” said that Interpol is waiting for the best opportunity to serve the arrest warrant. This may not prove easy – Privinvest is well connected in official circles in Lebanon, and particularly in its operational base of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. The Privinvest Chief Executive Officer, Iskandar Safa, is a close friend of the Abu Dhabi royal family.
The Mozambican Attorney-General’s Office (PGR) has repeatedly summoned Boustani to appear in Mozambique – first to provide information to the auditors from the company Kroll
Associates, who were investigating the three fraudulent companies, and then to appear before preliminary hearings into an additional case arising from the “hidden debts” in which he is one of the accused.
Boustani ignored every summons sent by the PGR. His current whereabouts are unknown.
US prosecutors did catch up with Boustani in 2019, and put him on trial in New York on charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud and securities fraud.
The American prosecutors could show, with a massive haul of intercepted emails and bank documentation, that Boustani was a key figure in massive bribery, paying off Credit Suisse bankers and Mozambican officials, including the then Finance Minister Manuel Chang.
Boustani made no attempt to deny the veracity of the documents. Instead he relied on clever lawyers arguing that, since the crimes did not take place in the United States, and Boustani had never set foot in the US before, he could not be guilty. This was a successful appeal to the jurors’ ignorance of US anti-corruption legislation, which does not depend on where the crime was committed.
The Maputo City Court wants Boustani to testify as a witness in the current “hidden debts” trial, by video-conference, if he cannot attend in person.
Source: AIM
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