Nampula businessman sentencing scheduled for March 11

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Nampula businessman sentencing scheduled for March 11

2:20 CAT | 04 Mar 2019

Photo: O País

The judge of the Judicial Court of the Province of Nampula needed only one day to try the case 29 / 5ª S / TJPN / 2018 instigated by the Provincial Attorney General’s Office of Nampula, which brought the charges more than a year ago. The defendant is the influential Nampula and Nacala entrepreneur, Momade Rassul.

The public prosecutor charged Rassul with money laundering, smuggling, illegal enrichment and criminal association. The fiscal fraud with which he was initially charged was considered as pertaining to another specialised jurisdiction.

Defence lawyers have insisted the defendant is innocent, claiming that he is merely an entrepreneur with companies set up after decades of work in several parts of the country.

“What the defendant said, what the reports report, the alleged formation of the offence has nothing to do with money laundering,” one of the two lawyers in Momade Rassul’s defence team said.

One of the declarants in this case is the former Minister of Planning and Development, Aiuba Cuereneia, who was called on behalf of Frelimo, as it is alleged that the defendant imported goods with exemptions granted by the party. At the time of the incidents, Cuereneia was Secretary of Administration and Finance of the Frelimo’s Central Committee.

In short remarks to O Pais, Cuereneia said he was calm and dismissed any crime linking his party to the defendant now on trial. “No facilities! As it was said here, it was all done within the law; of what is foreseen in the law,” Cuereneia stressed when asked if Frelimo had granted any facilities to the accused.

The defence said it had 3,902 pages of evidence proving the businessman’s innocence, while the prosecutor maintained that the case had all the elements necessary for the court to make a fair decision.

“The court will have to decide according to what it verified in the procedural documents, in the discussion and trial room, all this with the recommended fair justice,” the Nampula representative of the Provincial Attorney General’s office said.

According to the public prosecutor, Momade Rassul allegedly received through bank accounts linked to his companies the amount of 741,459,267 meticais from the deposit of large and small sums of cash made by natural persons in the cities of Maputo and Beira.

The judge scheduled the reading of the sentence for March 11.

By Ricardo Machava

Source: O País