Taipo trial: Accused admits falsifying documents – AIM report

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Taipo trial: Accused admits falsifying documents – AIM report

5:19 CAT | 17 Mar 2022

Photo: Domingo

On Wednesday, the second day of the trial in Maputo of Mozambique’s former Labour Minister Helena Taipo and ten others on corruption charges, one of the accused, Baltazar Mungoi, said he had been pressured into falsifying receipts in favour of the Directorate of Migrant Labour – but that he did so as a favour to a friend.

He said that, when the scandal of the theft of large sums of money from that directorate began to be investigated in 2017, Mauricio Xerinda, the husband of the co-accused Anastacia Zitha, the former director of finance in the directorate, asked him to begin a “commercial relationship” in which Mungoi would issue false invoices and receipts for the Directorate.

He then signed a contract in the name of his wife, Bela Graca (who owns Bela Events, a company that organises events) for the provision of services for the Directorate of Migrant Labour in the southern provinces of Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane.

Under this contract, he would receive 6.2 million meticais (about 97,000 US dollars), but without doing any work (since the events organised, in fact never existed). Mungoi, however, lamented that “I never saw any of the money”.

After the scandal became public knowledge, said Mungoi, Xerinda sent him emails telling him how to answer when he was questioned by investigators from the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption (GCCC).

He insisted that his sole involvement in the scam was to issue fictitious invoices and receipts on dates indicated by Xerinda. He said his sole intention was to help his friend.

A second accused, Heremenegildo Nhatave, who works for the government of Magude district in Maputo province, said he was contacted by the then director of migrant labour in the Labour Ministry, Jose Monjane, who asked him to supply the migrant labour director with agricultural inputs and irrigation equipment.

In 2015, his company, Vetagres Agpecuaria e Servicos, signed a contract with the directorate. Nhatave received 375,000 meticais, but never provided any of the inputs. Like Mungoi, Nhatave had signed documents simply to justify money leaving the coffers of the Directorate.

In all, Nhatave told the court, his company issued false invoices and receipts to the value of 14 million meticais. This was, in the prosecution’s view, money that the fraudsters in the Directorate stole, providing Nhatave with 375,000 meticais for his services.

Source: AIM