Taipo trial: Director of Minister’s Office denies taking money – AIM report

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Taipo trial: Director of Minister’s Office denies taking money – AIM report

8:08 CAT | 23 Mar 2022

File photo: O País

The director of the office of Mozambique’s former Labour Minister, Helena Taipo, on Monday denied that he had ever received 200,000 meticais (about 3.125 US dollars at the current exchange rate) from the Ministry’s Directorate of Migrant Labour (DTM).

The director, Sidonio dos Anjos Manuel, is one of 11 people, including Taipo herself, who currently on trial before the Maputo City Court, accused of stealing 113 million meticais from the directorate in 2014-15.

Manuel’s testimony to the court on Monday contradicted what he had said in the preliminary investigation. Then he had told prosecutors from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption (GCCC) that he had indeed received a cheque from the DTM but had passed it on to Taipo.

But now he withdrew that story: he had only admitted to receiving the cheque, he claimed, “to free myself of the problem”.

“I was angry, very angry”, he told the court. “Why did they say they gave me money that I never received? Everything that happened then made me produce this document (his confession that he took the money) to get out of the problem”.

During that first interrogation, Manuel said, he was advised to accept that he had received the cheque but only in order to channel the money to Taipo. He followed this advice, but then felt guilty about doing so.

The prosecution, however, has the cheque delivery note, apparently signed by Manuel, and thus proving that he had indeed received the money. Confronted with this document, he admitted that the signature looked like his, but denied ever signing it.

He suggested that his signature had been forged by the then director of the DTM, Anastacia Zita, and the head of the DTM administration and finance department, Jose Monjane.

A second accused, Alfredo Lucas, who owns a carpentry and furniture company, admitted that he had received two million meticais from the DTM, but claimed this was legitimate payment for goods supplied by his company, Indumobil.

He claimed that Indumobil had sold to the DTM flour mills, hoe handles, wire netting for henhouses, boots and poultry feed, among other items. These were not all goods produced by Indumobil – instead, Lucas had bought them in shops and sold them on to the DTM.

He could not prove this since he had no receipts. Nor had he signed any contract to sell these goods to the DTM.

“I worked with an accountant, and all the documents stayed with him”, sad Lucas. “He died in 2017. I was outside Maputo. His office was closed for 30 days. Later, one of his relatives called us to pick up the files. I saw that some documents had ben lost, including the contract”.

Source: AIM