Africa-Press – Mozambique. The judge hearing the trial of the main case of Mozambique’s hidden debts said on Thursday that there were indications Alexandre Chivale, lawyer of the former director of Economic Intelligence of the secret services António Carlos do Rosário had committed a crime.
The lawyer’s removal is due to “objective questions of conflict of interest” and indications “of crime,” Baptista said.
Baptista explained the reasons that led him to remove Chivale on Tuesday: it was not just that he was a “collaborator” with the secret services but also acted related to assets suspected of having been acquired with the money from the hidden debts.
“He worked for the State [as a SISE collaborator], pleaded against the same state and then, in the words of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, was systematically carrying out acts that contributed to money laundering,” the magistrate said.
Chivale, he continued, manages companies that, according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, are SISE operating vehicles and received part of the money from the hidden debts.
Chivale admitted in court to being a director of Txopela Investments, a company that the Public Prosecutor believes was used to pay bribes to António Carlos do Rosário.
The lawyer is also a majority shareholder in a company that looks after properties that the prosecution says were bought with the money from the hidden debts.
Chivale lives in one of the houses and on Tuesday was ordered by the court to leave it because the property had been seized by the courts and handed over to the custody of the Ministry of Economy and Finance as a trustee.
In addition to defending António Carlos do Rosário, the lawyer was part of the defence team of Ndambi Guebuza, defendant and eldest son of former Mozambican President Armando Guebuza, and also defended two other defendants, all in the same case.
Chivale was the Guebuza family’s lawyer in the murder trial of the former Mozambican president’s daughter, Valentina Guebuza – shot dead by her husband, Zófimo Muiane. He is serving a prison sentence for the crime.
The Mozambican justice system accuses the 19 defendants in the main case of the hidden debts of having formed a “gang” and embezzled US$2.7 billion (€2.28 billion) from the Mozambican state – a figure that is higher than the US$2.2 billion so far known in the case – raised from international banks through guarantees provided by the government.
The hidden debts were contracted between 2013 and 2014 through the British subsidiaries of investment banks Credit Suisse and VTB by Mozambican state companies Proindicus, Ematum and MAM.
The loans were secretly endorsed by the Frelimo government, led by the president at the time, Armando Guebuza, without the knowledge of parliament and the Administrative Court.
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