Hidden debts: Any deviations will have been made from abroad

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Hidden debts: Any deviations will have been made from abroad

1:42 CAT | 25 Apr 2018

File photo / Attorney General Beatriz Buchili

Today sees the release of the fourth annual report by Attorney General Beatriz Buchili – and perhaps the most highly anticipate by Mozambicans, given the curiosity that exists about some processes. Namely, the case of the so-called hidden debts (File nº1/PGR/2015).

The PGR report handles the matter in about three-and-half pages, but there is not much that is new.

The Attorney General begins by pointing out that she has fulfilled her promise to share the “essential aspects” of Kroll’s international and independent audit with both the Mozambican people and the international community. Aware of the internal and external pressure for the full publication of the audit report, Buchili mobilises the principles of secrecy of justice and the presumption of innocence to justify the publication in instalments. And more: “The report contains information that is not yet conclusive and needs further follow-up; it also contains indications whose publication may harm investigations in progress.”

Nevertheless, the Attorney General shares in her report what she calls the main conclusions, namely the inconsistencies in the declared purpose of contracting credit for part of the value; discrepancies in the prices of the assets and services delivered; evidences of failures in audited companies; inoperative businesses; and gaps in the process of issuing guarantees by the state. In essence, these are the same findings that the PGR published in June and July of last year.

The report also refers to the complaint about financial infractions that the Public Prosecution Service submitted to the Administrative Court, requesting the accountability of public managers and civil servants involved in the conclusion and management of contracts for financing and supply of goods and services. The acts that, in the eyes of the guarantor of legality, constitute financial infractions are summarised as follows: selection of banks and hiring of companies supplying goods and services without respect for procurement rules; execution of acts and contracts without submission to the prior and mandatory supervision of the Administrative Tribunal; making undue payments; state guarantees issued in excess of those defined by the Budget Law, without the competent authorisation of the Assembly of the Republic and in violation of the terms of the International Agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

The Attorney General also notes that the process of accountability for financial infractions that runs in the Administrative Court does not invalidate the one that aims at criminal accountability. That is why it is pursuing the preparatory instruction, and it relies on international cooperation to allow access to relevant information under the jurisdiction of other states. “Since all the values of the loans were transferred from credit banks located abroad to companies that supply goods and services also located abroad, to have been deviations, these would have been practised from those institutions,” the report says.

Despite naming no names, Buchili highlights the cooperation of “some countries” that had contact with the money being tracked, either as a destination or as a country of transit.

Following the reports of the international audit and the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, the Attorney General says she warned the Council of Ministers about “deficiencies and contradictions of legal texts”. Specifically, the alert was about the need to revise the law on the state business sector (the Assembly of the Republic has already approved this month the law that establishes the principles and rules applicable to the state business sector); the improvement of legislation on the secrecy of the state; (the Council of Ministers approved Decree No. 77/2017 of 28 December establishing procedures for issuing and managing public debt and guarantees issued by the state); and the monitoring of projects benefiting from financing contracted with state guarantees.

By Emídio Beúla

Source: O País