Africa-Press – Mozambique. A Maputo court has ordered pre-trial detention for Hussen Gulam Mahomed, detained this month at the airport in the Mozambican capital. He is one of the defendants in the mega-money laundering case and has a brother detained in the United States.
A source close to the case told Lusa this Thursday that Hussen Gulam Mahomed was detained on July 11 upon arrival from the United Arab Emirates to where he had allegedly fled.
He is a defendant in case 3/GCCCOT/22, as part of the ‘Stop Money Laundering’ operation of the Central Office for Combating Organized and Transnational Crime of the Mozambican Public Prosecutor’s Office (PGR).
He was heard in the following days by a criminal investigation judge at Maputo City Court, who remanded him in pre-trial detention as a coercive measure.
The businessman is indicted for document forgery, tax fraud, criminal conspiracy and money laundering.
In addition to creating ‘shell’ companies in Mozambique, Hussen Gulam Mahomed is suspected of using bank accounts held by these same companies to transfer large sums of money to tax havens, claiming to be “purchasing goods for import that never entered” the country, according to the prosecution.
The same source adds that the defendant “always relied on the assistance of customs agents, lawyers, and some commercial bank technicians in the document forgery and subsequent export of capital”.
Hussen Gulam is the brother of Norolamin Gulam, detained in the United States on suspicion of international drug trafficking and also a defendant in the same case, 3/GCCCOT/22, in Mozambique.
Two other brothers, recently released by the Maputo City Court, are also defendants in this case, as are a number of customs agents and several bank employees, among more than 40 individuals, in addition to the shell companies themselves, totalling 62 entities.
The source said that Hussen Gulam was, like his brothers, allegedly “a key player in the money laundering operations, resulting in the crimes being committed, building empires in Nacala, Nampula, and Maputo (…) through shell companies created for the purpose of exporting capital”.
According to the same source, the Public Prosecutor’s Office suspects that Hussen Gulam and his brothers used third parties, including employees, to set up companies in their names, in an action that “caused losses to the Mozambican state”, primarily through tax evasion.
As a result of the investigations carried out in this ongoing operation, 32 properties, luxury vehicles and monetary amounts have already been seized from the defendants.
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