Mozambique: Military registration target surpassed - AIM report
in file CoM
The trial of Mozambique’s “hidden debts” case in British courts is not expected to begin until 2023, a judge at London’s High Court ruled on Wednesday.
After hearing arguments over two days on how to move forward with the case that began in 2019, judge Robin Knowles decided to bring most of the issues at stake together in a single hearing, which will last for three months, on dates yet to be determined.
The Republic of Mozambique’s lawyer, Joe Smouha, had initially proposed a phased approach to the proceedings, but the other parties rejected this option.
The Mozambican Attorney General’s Office started a civil action in British courts in 2019 to try to write off the $622 million (€528 million at the current exchange rate) debt owed by state-owned company ProIndicus to the Credit Suisse bank and seek compensation to cover all losses resulting from the hidden debts scandal.
The Mozambican state’s hidden debts of around US$2.2 billion (€1.9 billion at current exchange rates) were incurred between 2013 and 2014, in the form of loans with the British subsidiaries of investment banks Credit Suisse and VTB, on behalf of Mozambican state companies Proindicus, Ematum and MAM.
The financing was intended to purchase tuna fishing boats and maritime security equipment and services provided by the companies of the Privinvest shipping group.
The Attorney General’s Office alleges that the loans resulted from corrupt payments to senior Mozambican officials, with former President Armando Guebuza, his eldest son Armando Ndambi Guebuza, former Mozambican Finance Minister Manuel Chang, former Director of Economic Intelligence of SISE António Carlos do Rosário, and former Director of the e State Intelligence and Security Services (SISE) Gregório Leão being named.
The current president of Mozambique, Filipe Nyusi, was also called to testify.
In March, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales granted the request of the Privinvest Group, which denies having made corrupt payments, for the issue of the validity of the contracts to be decided by arbitration in the Swiss courts.
The case has become more complex since the aggregation of several separate actions, namely by banks VTB, Banco Comercial Português, United Bank for Africa, Banco Internacional de Moçambique, by Beauregarde Holdings and by Orobica Holdings, against the Republic of Mozambique for having suspended payment of the debts, to the detriment of their financial interests in the contracts.
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