Mozambique: Court orders seizure of Startimes assets – AIM report | Watch

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Mozambique: Court orders seizure of Startimes assets – AIM report | Watch

4:48 CAT | 09 Feb 2022

Composite image: Screengrabs from StrongLive

The Maputo City Court has ordered the seizure of assets of the Chinese owned company Startimes Mozambique, to pay off a debt of three million dollars to the firm Development Distribution Services [DDS].

According to a report in the weekly paper “Dossiers & Factos”, on Tuesday the court declared the confiscation of all the property of Startimes Mozambique. “Dossiers & Factos” has a poor reputation, but in this case, according to other sources contacted by AIM, the story is essentially correct.

The debt arises from a consultancy contract which DDS signed with Startimes during the tender to determine which company would run the migration from analogue to digital for Mozambican broadcasting services. DDS complains that Startimes did not honour the contract and ended up owing DDS three million dollars.

Startimes Mozambique is the local subsidiary of the Chinese company Startimes Software Technologies. The Chinese company was in partnership with the late Valentina Guebuza, the daughter of the then Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, and it was widely assumed that Startimes would run the digital migration.

The Chinese parent company owned 85 per cent of Startimes Mozambique, and the remaining 15 per cent was in the hands of the Guebuza family company, Focus 21, chaired by Valentina Guebuza.

In April 2014 the then Minister of Transport and Communications, Gabriel Muthisse, signed a concession agreement for the country’s digital broadcasting system with the head of Startimes Software Technologies, Pang Xinxing.

But Startimes did not take over the digital migration, perhaps because of the murder of Valentina Guebuza, at the hands of her husband, in December 2016. Certainly Startimes had nothing to do with the switch-off of the analogue transmitters in 2019.

Read: Startimes chosen again for digital migration – Mozambique

The digital decoders are sold by the company TMT (Transport, Multiplexing and Transmission), which describes itself as a joint venture between the publicly owned Mozambican radio and television companies, and the telecommunications company TDM.

Read: Digital migration: Analogue blackout in December – Mozambique

Startimes operates satellite television services in Mozambique, but may be quite unable to continue now that its equipment has been seized.

DDS submitted an injunction in 2021, requesting the seizure of the Startimes goods “for an indeterminate period”. Among the property seized on the court’s orders are computers, printers, office furniture, vehicles, any money in the company’s bank accounts, and any equipment to do with digital migration that was still in the possession of Startimes. The server that distributes Startimes services to its clients has been switched off.

The Chinese managers of Startimes attempted, unsuccessfully, to prevent the seizure.

Watch the StrongLive report.

Source: AIM / StrongLive