Hidden debts trial: – 28 January 2022 – AIM report

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Hidden debts trial: – 28 January 2022 – AIM report

6:06 CAT | 28 Jan 2022

Photo: O País

Witnesses shed some light on money laundering

A witness in Mozambique’s “hidden debts” trial, Naldo Manjate, on Friday told the Maputo City Court, that he had allowed one of the 19 accused, his brother, Cremildo Manjate, to use his bank account to receive large sums of money.

He said that, in May 2014, the account had received 3.35 million meticais (about 52,000 US dollars) from the sale of an unfinished building in the city of Matola. He claimed not to know who had bought the building.

When he testified last year, Cremildo Manjate admitted that he had received 125,000 US dollars from the company MMocambique Construcoes, owned by another of the accused, Fabiao Mabunda.

The payment was supposedly made on the instructions of Angela Leao, the wife of the former general director of the Security and Intelligence Service (SISE), Gregorio Leao.

Manjate claimed that he used his brother’s bank account, because his own had become inactive – an excuse which did not convince the prosecution.

The prosecution argues that the Leao family, Mabunda and MMocambique Construcoes, are all part of a money laundering web through which bribes paid by the Abu Dhabi based group Privinvest were channeled.

The court also heard from businessman Tomas Mabjaia, and his uncle, Salomao Mabjaia, about how the younger Mabjaia’s account was used to receive money from another of the accused, Elias Moiane, who paid 11.5 million meticais for a house owned by the Mabjaia family in central Maputo.

Although Elias Moiane handled the negotiations, he seems to have been acting for his aunt, Ines Moiane, who was once the private secretary of former President Armando Guebuza.

Ines Moiane is one of the members of Guebuza’s entourage who admits to taking money from Privinvest. In September she told the court Privinvest had paid her 750,000 euros, but denied this was a bribe.

Moiane laundered her 750,000 euros in the purchase of two flats in central Maputo, which presumably include the flat brought from the Mabjaias. She asked her nephew Elias to handle the purchase, with the result that he too was arrested and accused of money laundering.

In this case, the accounts of the accused and the witnesses fit together. They are yet another indication of how Privinvest bribes were spent on investments in real estate.

Judge Efigenio Baptista announced that next Monday, one of the key figures in the scandal, former Fisheries Minister Vitor Borges, will testify. Back in 2014, Borges strongly defended the fraudulent company Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company), which acquired loans of 850 million dollars from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia, but quickly went bankrupt.

Former Ematum executives have already told the court that the company was never viable. No doubt judge Baptista would like to know why Borges defended this ruinous enterprise.

Source: AIM