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Judge Efigenio Baptista of the Maputo City Court on Friday expelled two defence lawyers from the trial of 19 people accused of financial crimes in connection with the scandal of Mozambique’s “hidden debts”, and promised to sue one of them for contempt of court.
The problem arose because one of the witnesses called, Fanuel Paunde, is a lawyer who has, in the past represented one of the accused, Renato Matusse, once a political adviser to former President Armando Guebuza.
Under Mozambican law, lawyers may only violate their duty of confidentiality to their clients, if they receive authorization from the Mozambique Bar Association (OAM). Paunde was concerned that, if he testified, the OAM might bar him from practicing law.
The OAM itself expressed concern that it had not been approached – but Baptista retorted that “the Bar Association does not give orders to the Court”.
He said the duty of confidentiality only arises in those cases where Paunde had been acting as a lawyer. But the court intended to question him about other matters, in which he had been acting as a business executive.
For Paunde is the majority shareholder and managing director of the company Okanga Representacoes Ltd., and Matusse had been one of Okanga’s clients. The notification from the public prosecutor’s office, summoning Paunde to testify, clearly stated that the issue at stake was his work as an Okanga director,
This did not satisfy Matusse’s lawyer, Salvador Nkamati, who insisted that the Court was acting “illegally” by violating the statutes of the OAM, which have the force of law.
Baptista retorted that the article in the Statutes quoted by Nkomati only applies in matters where Paunde was acting as a lawyer. “So if your premise is wrong, so is your conclusion”, he declared.
Nkamati continued to interrupt Baptista, and so the judge warned that he would be thrown out of the courtroom. Nkomati stood up to leave, declaring “I’m not staying here to listen to this ignorance”.
Baptista ordered Nkamati’s removal (though, since he was already leaving, there was no need for any police intervention). He added that copies of Nkamate’s insulting remarks will be sent to the Public Prosecutor so that he can be charged with contempt of court.
Baptista told Paunde “Nkamate is Matusse’s lawyer, and he has an interest in you not testifying. You would be right in not wishing to testify, if the acts you undertook for Renato Matusse were in your capacity as a lawyer”.
He warned him that people called as witnesses are obliged to answer the court’s questions. Otherwise they will be arrested and charged with disobedience. Faced with that choice, Paunde agreed to testify.
But a second defence lawyer, Jaime Sunda, declared that Paunde had been wrongly notified, and if the court wished to hear from Okanga, then the summons should have gone to the company and not its director.
Baptista declared that Sunda was out of order, and told him to stop interrupting. Sunda ignored this warning and declared “the Court must learn how to listen”.
The judge accused him of lack of respect, but Sunda continued trying to speak at the same time as Baptista, leading Baptista to expel him too from the courtroom. “It is the judge, and not the lawyer, who is presiding over this trial”, he said.
As promised by Baptista, Paunde’s testimony was limited to his role at Okanga. Prosecutor Sheila Marrengula wanted to know about the deal whereby Okanga bought a flat in central Maputo from Matusse – a flat which Matusse had earlier purchased from Neusa Matos, a jurist who had worked alongside him in President Guebuza’s office.
Although Matusse said in his own testimony last year that the flat had cost nine million meticais (about 141,000 US dollars, at the current exchange rate), Paunde insisted that he had only paid six million. Furthermore, he had paid in cash, in a mixture of meticais and South African rands.
Asked if he had any paperwork to prove how much had been paid, Paunde said everything had been done informally, between friends. The money had not gone through the banking system.
Paunde said that Matusse had sold the flat to Okanga, because it did not have enough space to park cars. He regarded this as “a real problem”.
Matusse is facing charges of money-laundering, embezzlement and trafficking in influence. Last September, he told the court that Jean Boustani, a senior official of the Abu Dhabi based group Privinvest, had purchased houses and other goods for him to the value of 1.66 million dollars.
Matusse denied that this constituted a bribe, but the prosecution believes that it was the money from Privinvest that allowed Matusse to buy the flat from Neusa Matos.
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