Mozambique: Civil society calls for trial of “hidden debts” suspects – AIM report

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Mozambique: Civil society calls for trial of “hidden debts” suspects – AIM report

1:51 CAT | 15 May 2020

File photo: DW

The Budget Monitoring Forum (FMO), a platform of about 20 Mozambican civil society organisations, on Wednesday called for a trial and exemplary punishment of those responsible for the ”hidden debts” of the fraudulent companies Proindicus and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management).

The FMO has campaigned tirelessly on the issue of the enormous fraud whereby Proindicus, MAM and a third company, Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company), obtained loans of over two billion US dollars from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia, on the basis of loan guarantees granted by the previous government headed by the then President Armando Guebuza.

Bu the guarantees were illegal and the companies, set up by officials of the Security and Intelligence Service (SISE), were never viable. The FMO is among the bodies that mobilised a petition of 2,000 citizens who successfully took the issue to the Constitutional Council, Mozambique’s top authority on constitutional matters.

Last year, the Council declared the Ematum loan and guarantee null and void, and on Tuesday it made a nearly identical ruling on the Proindicus and MAM loans and their worthless guarantees.

At a Maputo press conference on Wednesday, the FMO praised the Constitutional Council for its ruling, and noted that by now those responsible for contracting the loans are well known. Indeed, some of them have been in preventive detention for the past year (including Ndambi Guebuza, the oldest son of President Guebuza, Gregorio Leao, the former head of SISE, and Antonio do Rosario, the SISE officer who became chairperson of all three companies). But others have not yet been arrested and freely walk the streets of Maputo.

All should pay for the crimes they committed, the FMO demands. Its coordinator, Adriano Nuvunga, told reporters “The debts were contracted outside of the law with the connivance of international banks”.

If a public official goes beyond the powers conferred on him and commits illegal administrative acts, as was the case with the Proindicus, Ematum and MAM loans, it is that person who must take responsibility, Nuvunga added.

Despite its satisfaction at the Council’s ruling, the FMO remains concerned that the government may simply ignore it – as it ignored the ruling on Ematum last year.

The Council had declared the Ematum loan guarantee null and void “with all the legal consequences”. This clearly meant that any attempt to repay the Ematum loan with state funds was illegal.

The Ematum loan took the form of bonds, and that bond issue has been renegotiated twice. The latest agreement between the government and the ex-Ematum bondholders was in May 2019, just five days before the Constitutional Council’s ruling. The Finance Ministry had been reckless in negotiating this new agreement when it knew full well that the matter was before the highest court in the land.

But the Finance Ministry simply carried on as if there had been no ruling from the Council. The government made the first payment of interest under the May 2019 agreement in March of this year.

Nuvunga criticised the Constitutional Council for allowing the government to make such payments, using money that belongs to all Mozambican citizens. “With the Council rulings, we want these debts and their guarantees removed from the national public accounts”, he said.

The people who organised the loans “got rich”, said Nuvunga, citing the independent audit into the three companies.

“It’s time to bring them to trial”, he insisted, “both those who are in detention and those who are still at liberty. They should be tried and sentenced, and their assets seized”.

Source: AIM