Opposition claims that “Mafia network” captured the state in the case of Mozambique’s hidden debts

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Opposition claims that “Mafia network” captured the state in the case of Mozambique’s hidden debts

12:33 CAT | 07 Jan 2019

in file CoM

The two main opposition parties in Mozambique have said that the involvement of top officials in the hidden debt scandal shows that there is a “mafia network” in the Mozambican state.

“The possibility of a Mozambican head of state [at the time, Armando Guebuza] being involved in these schemes is a great disappointment for Mozambicans,” Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) spokesman José Manteigas said.

The US Court of Appeal in the case of Mozambique’s hidden debts assumes that former president Armando Guebuza received bribes to make the financing of the state-owned company Proindicus viable.

According to Manteigas, Manuel Chang’s detention on 29 December was bound to “drag in the others”, as “the former Mozambican finance minister could not have acted alone”.

“There are a number of people who are involved in this process,” Manteigas said, adding that the process casts aspersions on the Mozambican justice system.

“Our PGR [Attorney General] has remained undaunted and whistling aside from the start. It’s a great shame,” he said.

Meanwhile, the head of the Democratic Movement of Mozambique (MDM) bench in parliament, Lutero Simango, discerns that “the situation is becoming clearer”, and that it was a “mafia network that was acting according to an international plan”.

“The state is being captured by a mafia network,” Simango said, and the “guardians of legality in Mozambique are doing nothing”.

“We will continue to advocate that those responsible for this financial engineering are brought to book. The Mozambican people should not pay for this.”

Lusa contacted Alexandre Chivale, the lawyer of the former Mozambican head of state, but he declined to comment. “I do not comment on opinions. I comment on facts,” he said.

The US indictment uses correspondence between the defendants to make it clear that top officials in the ministries of Defence, Interior and Air Force in 2011 also benefited, but stops short of naming the former minister of defence and Mozambique’s current president, Filipe Nyusi.

The prosecution cites an email from November 2011 that Jean Boustani, the Lebanese national who negotiated the loans on behalf of Privinvest, received from a person whose name is redacted but knows to the prosecution, which reads: “To ensure that the project has the green light of the Head of State [to date Armando Guebuza], a payment has to be agreed before we get there, to know and agree, well ahead of time, what has to be paid and when.”

Soon after, this unidentified person adds: “Whatever the advance payments that have to be paid before the project, they can be incorporated into the project and recovered.”

The US indictment, made under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), then presents Boustani’s response to this person, in which the Lebanese warns of “negative experiences in Africa, especially in relation to ‘success rates’, “an expression known and used to signify the payment of bribes to ensure successful project approval”.

In the reply, sent three days later, the person whose name is erased, but who appears to be a member of the government, states: “Fabulous, I agree with you; let’s look at the project in two different lights; one the massaging of the system and the obtaining of the political will to advance the project; and the second the implementation and execution of the project”.

Less than a month later, based on email exchange among those involved, US prosecutors say “defendants Jean Boustani and ERASED NAME agree to pay US$50 million in bribes and ‘gloves’ to members of the government of Mozambique and US$12 million in ‘kickbacks’ for Privinvest co-conspirators”.

Source: Lusa