Army command case: Prosecution demands prison sentences – AIM

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Army command case: Prosecution demands prison sentences – AIM

8:12 CAT | 21 Jun 2017

Notícias

The prosecution has called for “exemplary sentences” for all the accused in the theft, between 2010 and 2015, of 36 million meticais (about 1.2 million US dollars, at the exchange rate of the time) from the Army Command.

Summing up the case against the nine accused on Tuesday, before the Maputo City Court, prosecutor Armando Parruque said that prison sentences should be handed down to all of them, and that the goods they had acquired with the stolen money must be confiscated and revert to the state.

The key figures in the theft, Ernesto Rufino and Abdul Ismael, worked in the wages sector of the Army Command. They put the names of friends and relatives on the wages sheets so that every month money to which they were not entitled would be deposited in their accounts.

Rufino and Ismael used the disreputable defence that they were only carrying out orders. They claimed the corrupt scheme had been designed by the immediate superior, Alberto Martinho, who kept 60 per cent of the stolen money for himself.

But Martinho died in 2014, and Parruque pointed out that the theft continued until early 2015. In any case, Rufino and Ismael had the right and the duty to refuse to accept illegal orders.

Most of the other accused are relatives and lovers of the soldiers involved in the theft, who allowed the stolen money to be deposited in their accounts. Their defence was that they did not know where the money that mysteriously appeared in their accounts had come from.

Parruque said that was no excuse at all – for there is nothing normal about citizens handing over control of their personal bank accounts, and their bank credit or debit cards, to others.

The defence lawyers did not argue that their clients were innocent, but pleaded with the court for mercy. They said the accused should not be jailed, but should be sentenced to alternative forms of punishment (such as fines or community service). Leniency was in order, the lawyers said, because the accused had collaborated with the court, confessing their crimes. Martinho and Ismael had been enticed into crime by Martinho, and agreed to enter his scheme because of their low wages.

Their clients were guilty of fraud, the lawyers admitted, but not of the other crimes on the charge sheet – money laundering and conspiracy.

The court will deliver its verdict and sentence on 6 July.

Source: AIM