Mozambique: Ex-president points to successor as knowing most about hidden debts

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Mozambique: Ex-president points to successor as knowing most about hidden debts

7:09 CAT | 18 Feb 2022

Photo: Lusa

Armando Guebuza, a former president of Mozambique, told a court in Maputo on Thursday that the current head of state, Filipe Nyusi, would be better placed than him to clarify details of the economic and financial scheme that generated the hidden debts taken on by public enterprises, given the office Nyusi held at the time.

“There was a group delegated to negotiate” the loans,” Guebuza said in testimony during the trial relating to the hidden debts scandal. “I didn’t need to be the one to know.

“Who knows, perhaps the head of the operative command could clarify better,” Guebuza said, referring to Nyusi, who as minister of defence at the time was charged by the then president to lead a group designated the operational command to structure the maritime protection project that was at the root of the financial scandal.

In court, Guebuza acknowledged responsibility, as head of state, for the creation of the public enterprises Ematum and MAM on which the project was centred, in addition to a third company, ProIndicus, saying that it was justified by threats to Mozambique’s security. But he said that details could best be had from the operational command and “its boss”.

Guebuza, who was testifying in the trial to questions posed by public prosecutors, when asked whether he remembered who had first proposed the maritime protection project said that the process had involved “structured bodies” that “presented proposals” that after being approved could continue to be worked on.

“In these cases, it is the chief who is chairing the meeting who is accountable,” he said. “In this case, the operational command had its head, who was the minister of national defence.”

In his statement, the former president said that “the economic and financial part was studied, assessed and then proposed by the Defence and Security Forces (FDS) through the operational command.

Earlier, Guebuza told the court that he had contacted the people involved in the maritime protection project to “encourage them to work” but that “the rest … I didn’t do; maybe it was those people.

“The decision to seek resources, namely debt, was taken by me, delegating it to the operational command through its leaders,” he maintained. “I don’t know if there is any member of the operational command here … perhaps at another opportunity.”

Guebuza said that “too much has been said about defence and security issues” at the trial, stressing that “this should not be done” because the country needed to “defend our sovereignty.”

This statement was made after he described Kroll, the international consultancy firm that audited the project for Mozambique’s Office of Public Prosecutions, as a “foreign spy firm”.

The former president did not clarify whether it was he who had ordered the then finance minister, Manuel Chang – who has been detained in South Africa since 2018, awaiting a decision on extradition requests lodged by the US as well as Mozambique – to sign the sovereign guarantees for the loans for the maritime protection project.

“He is the one who should answer” about “who gave the order to sign the guarantees,” he said, insisting despite prosecutors’ insistence that “I have no knowledge”.

Guebuza’s testimony was interrupted twice due to power cuts in the tent that has been set up outside the high-security prison in Maputo since August to accommodate the mega trial.

Early in the morning, prison officials announced that they had repelled an armed attack on the power station that supplies electricity to the trial venue, saying they suspected sabotage against the day’s hearing.

Source: Lusa