Africa-Press – Mozambique. Businesswoman Angela Leao, who is married to the former head of the Mozambican Security and Intelligence Service (SISE), Gregorio Leao, on Friday protested that prosecutors have asked about her real estate dealings and not about the country’s “hidden debts”.
Speaking before the Maputo City Court, on her second day of giving evidence, Leao repeatedly claimed that the debts “have nothing to do with me”, and that she had never been in contact with Privinvest, the Abu Dhabi based group at the heart of the scandal.
Eventually, this provoked the judge, Efigenio Baptista, into giving a short lesson on how the scam operated. The 2017 independent audit by the company Kroll Associates, into the three fraudulent, security-linked companies Proindicus, Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), showed that Privinvest had over-invoiced the companies massively.
The “hidden debts” originate in the 2.2 billion dollars of loans the three companies obtained from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia, on the basis of illicit loan guarantees issued by the government of the day under the then President, Armando Guebuza. But the loan money was sent, not to the companies in Maputo but to Privinvest, which became the sole contractor for the companies.
Privinvest sent the companies fishing boat, patrol vessels, radars and other assets, which the Kroll audit showed had been overvalued by more than 700 million US dollars.
The money from the Privinvest over-invoicing, Baptista said, was used to pay off individuals. Since the Mozambican state was being obliged to repay the loans, the money that had been diverted through over-invoicing “is money that belongs to the Mozambican state”, insisted the judge.
But Leao insisted that all the money used in her real estate operations came from her own legitimate businesses, and had nothing to do with the hidden debts and Privinvest bribes. When asked to explain precisely where her money had come from, she simply refused to answer.
Much of the money Leao received in 2013 had come via the company MMocambique Construcoes, a building firm owned by her associate Fabiao Mabunda. He told the court earlier this week that he had received about nine million dollars from Privinvest, which was then passed on in instalments to Angela Leao.
Leao also reverted to attacking the Public Prosecutor’s Office. She claimed that the Public Prosecutor “has been pressured to arrest people”, but could give no examples of such pressure. “What has the money transferred from MMocambique to various of the accused got to do with pressure”, asked Baptista. “It is you that must show what you did is not criminal”.
The court also heard the testimony of self-employed builder Sidonio Sitoe, charged with money laundering after he had acted as an intermediary between MMocambique and Angela Leao.
In the 2013-2014 period, Sitoe built houses for Leao in the southern beach resort of Ponta de Ouro, and the Maputo neighbourhood of Costa do Sol. Leao paid a total of 1.5 million dollars for these houses. All that money was paid via MMocambique.
Like several other defendants, Sitoe had no paperwork to justify many of his transactions. He had signed no contract with Leao, and admitting to paying no tax on the income he had received from her.
He admitted to having just one client – Angela Leao. Asked why, Sitoe said “I don’t know. She just likes my houses”.
When prosecuting attorney Sheila Marrengula asked if he knew where Leao’s money came from, he replied “Why should I know where the money came from?”
But, as the Privinvest bribes came under investigation, so the relations between Leao and Sitoe began to unravel. He admitted that Leao started threatening him after suspects were called into the Attorney-General’s Office (PGR) in late 2018. “We had a rather unpleasant discussion”, he said, but declined to go into detail.
However, the details exist in the record of an interrogation in the PGR on 3 January 2019. Sitoe went there of his own volition to complain of Leao’s behavior. Marrengula read out this record, according to which Leao rang up Sitoe after his first interrogation to complain that he had “spoken too much”, particularly about the houses he had sold her. Leao told Sitoe that he should have told the prosecutors he knows nothing about the houses, and cannot remember anything about payments.
Sitoe also told Assistant Attorney-General Alberto Paulo that, since his falling out with Leao, he had noticed strange cars parked permanently outside his house, and, when he went to the city of Matola, a vehicle with darkened windows turned up with people inside taking photographs of him.
