Africa-Press – Mozambique. Judge Efigenio Baptista, of the Maputo City Court, on Tuesday night carried out his threat to start contempt of court proceedings against Antonio do Rosario, the former head of economic intelligence in the country’s Security and Intelligence Service (SISE).
Rosario is one of the 19 people on trial before Baptista for crimes arising from the scandal of Mozambique’s “hidden debts”. He is one of those who designed the scheme whereby three fraudulent, security-related companies, Proindicus, Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), obtained loans of more than two billion dollars from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia.
The banks only granted the loans because the government of the day, under former President Armando Guebuza, issued illegal loan guarantees, violating both the Mozambican constitution and the budget laws of 2013 and 2014. Those guarantees turned hidden loans into hidden debts because, when the companies went bankrupt, the Mozambican state became liable to repay the money.
Throughout much of Tuesday’s proceedings Rosario made little attempt to hide his disdain for Baptista and for prosecutor Sheila Marrengula, leading the judge to warn him that, if he continued along that path, he could be held in contempt of court.
The final straw came in the evening session when Rosario demanded that the court should not cite the independent audit of Proinducus, Ematum and MAM, undertaken in 2017 by the company Kroll.
Rosario insisted that the court should not use the Kroll audit report, without also citing the response from the three companies. At the time Rosario was chairperson of the board of all three companies.
Baptista pointed out that the Kroll report is a piece of expert evidence, and objected to an accused person trying to tell him what can be admitted into evidence and what cannot.
“The accused must not lecture the court on principles of justice”, he said. “You are not able to give me lessons in law”.
Rosario retorted “It’s better to end this trial and for you to give your sentence now!” He claimed he had been “fighting for justice for two and a half years” (i.e. since his arrest in early 2019).
He continued to interrupt the judge, telling him “you should be ashamed of yourself!” So Baptista announced the start of contempt of court proceedings, reading out a short list of Rosario’s more outrageous statements, which will be sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Rosario reacted by giving a clenched fist salute, and declaring “Very good! My first victory!”
It is hardly surprising that Rosario wants to exclude the Kroll audit from the evidence. The audit report gives damning details of how the three companies, under Rosario’s management, tried to sabotage the audit, sometime giving the threadbare excuse of “national security”.
The main challenge in completing the audit, Kroll said, “was the lack of information available from the Mozambique companies. Kroll spent a considerable amount of time requesting and liaising with representatives of the Mozambique companies to obtain information and documentation that was, in some case, either ultimately incomplete or not provided at all”.
Key to this obstruction was Rosario (referred to in the report as “Person A”). Kroll said it repeatedly asked Rosario for “outstanding information that would provide a better understanding of expenditure: the response was that the requested information was ‘classified’ and not available”.
Kroll also found it could not obtain “reliable accounting records from the Mozambique companies to enable a proper assessment of the financial position of each company. Further, the Mozambique companies were unable to provide complete loan agreements or supply contracts”.
Even worse, Rosario threw the auditors out of his office, and boasted over the internet that he had done so. He chased the auditors away, he wrote, “because they wanted details about state security”.
“For Kroll, we know who they really are and what they want,” he said. “I am happy to see the very negative way they attack me, because this proves that we do not give in to pressure and we are not afraid.”
It is not at all clear who Rosario meant by “we”, since Kroll, far from being uninvited, was hired by the Attorney-General’s Office (PGR) to investigate the three companies.
The court adjourned at about 23.00 on Tuesday evening, and the trial will resume on Thursday.
