Mozambique: Ex-president’s son guilty in hidden debt scandal released on parole

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Mozambique: Ex-president’s son guilty in hidden debt scandal released on parole

8:56 CAT | 19 Jun 2025

File photo: O País

The son of former Mozambican president Armando Guebuza, sentenced to 12 years in prison in the hidden debt scandal, the biggest corruption case in Mozambique, has been released, a source at the Maputo High Court of Appeal told Lusa on Wednesday.

“He left the prison where he was being held on Tuesday and is now on parole,” the source told Lusa.

Ndambi Guebuza was sentenced to 12 years in prison on December 7, 2022, after being arrested and placed in preventive detention in 2019.

The Maputo City Court found it proven that the son of former President Guebuza received bribes to influence his father to approve the coastal protection project, which was used to raise money to feed hidden debts.

At the time, Efigénio Baptista, the judge in the case, explained that Ndambi Guebuza was convicted of the crimes of criminal association and criminal conspiracy, blackmail, influence peddling, forgery, embezzlement and money laundering.

In addition to Ndambi Guebuza, on Tuesday, Ângela Leão, wife of Gregório Leão, former head of the State Information and Security Service (SISE), sentenced to 11 years in the same case, was also released.

“This is conditional release,” a Supreme Court source told Lusa on Tuesday.

Ângela Leão was also convicted on December 7, 2022, after being arrested and placed in preventive detention in 2019, on the grounds that it had been proven that she had received bribes on behalf of her husband, who was also convicted.

After serving half of her sentence (including the period of preventive detention), Ângela Leão submitted a request for parole, but the Maputo High Court of Appeal, in light of the 2019 Penal Code, argued at the time that the convicted woman should serve three quarters of her sentence.

The Supreme Court, in turn, ruled that the previous law (2014), which was in force at the time of the crime and the initiation of criminal proceedings, should apply, allowing for parole after serving half of the sentence.

“It is unreasonable (…) that the official suspect should be surprised by the tightening of criminal law and the enforcement of criminal sanctions at a stage when she has already been charged, indicted, tried and convicted under the previous criminal law,” the Supreme Court stated in a ruling on April 14 this year.

In addition to Ângela and Ndambi, two other convicts had been granted parole in May this year, namely Cipriano Mutota, a former director of the SISE Studies Office, and Fabião Mabunda, a construction technician who owned a company that received bribes from Privinvest, according to the court.

At the time of the trial, the judge sentenced six of the 19 official suspects to 12 years in prison, the highest sentence handed down on the last day of the reading of the sentence in Maputo.

Among other crimes, the court found it proven that they were bribed to facilitate meetings with the former Mozambican president and influence the approval of the coastal protection project used to raise the money that fuelled the hidden debts involving the Privinvest shipyards.

The court hearing the case also ruled that assets it considered to be “proceeds of crime” from the convicted defendants should be forfeited to the state.

The hidden debt scandal dates back to 2013 and 2014, when the then minister of finance, Manuel Chang, now detained in the United States, approved, without parliamentary approval, state guarantees on loans taken out by Proinducus, Ematum and MAM from Credit Suisse and VTB banks.

Discovered in 2016, the debts were estimated at around US$2.7 billion (more than €2.3 billion), according to figures presented by the Mozambican public prosecutor.

Mozambique was then one of the ten fastest growing economies in the world for two decades, according to the World Bank, but ended up plunging into financial turmoil after the case, considered one of the country’s biggest financial scandals, which led to the blocking of foreign aid at the time.

Source: Lusa