Africa-Press – Mozambique. Antonio Carlos do Rosario, the former head of economic intelligence in Mozambique’s Security Service (SISE), on Thursday denied taking bribes from Privinvest, the Abu Dhabi based group which became the sole contractor for the three fraudulent, security-related companies Proindicus, Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management).
On the 30th day of the trial of Rosario and 18 others for crimes arising from Mozambique’s “hidden debts”, prosecutor Sheila Marrengula said the records show that Rosario had received the equivalent of just short of 350 million meticais from Privinvest (about 5.5 million dollars at current exchange rates, but worth considerably more at the exchange rate of 2013).
Rosario declared that he had never received a penny from Privinvest, either for himself or for anybody else. Nor had Privinvest ever offered to bribe him. As for whether, like several of his co-defendants, he has bank accounts in the United Arab Emirates, Rosario said the only accounts he has are in Mozambique.
Asked about properties in South Africa, Rosario denied that he owned them, or several of the luxury cars the prosecution mentioned.
But much of the information on bribes comes from email correspondence that the prosecution found on computers seized from co-defendants, notably the man who claimed to be a “facilitator” for the Privinvest. Ematum and MAM deals, Teofilo Nhangumele, and Ndambi Guebuza, the oldest son of former president Armando Guebuza.
In an email exchange with Privinvest official Jean Boustani, Nhangumele said that, following the first loan of 372 million dollars to Proindicus, Privinvest had provided 50 million dollars in bribe money. 8.5 million dollars went to Nhangumele, 8.5 million to his colleague Bruna Langa, and 33 million to Ndambi Guebuza.
Nhangumele protested to Boustani that Guebuza Junior was refusing to divide his share of the bribe. Ten million dollars of his share should have gone to others, including Rosario, referred to by the nickname “Bang”.
Rosario said he had idea that such a nickname was being used, and before his arrest, he did not know either Nhangumele or Ndambi Guebuza. And he had worked regularly with Boustani, and had no need of a middleman such as Nhangumele.
As at earlier stages of his testimony, he challenged the authenticity of the documents used by the prosecution, and accused the government of forging documents to incriminate him. In an angry exchange with the judge, Efigenio Baptista, he declared “The forgers are continuing their work!”
Nonetheless, he admitted that the signatures on some of the documents “look like mine”.
Baptista said that, if he really thought the documents were faked, he could always ask his lawyer, Alexandre Chivale, to have their authenticity tested.
Among the other surprising claims made by Rosario was that he did not know the loan guarantees signed by the then finance minister, Manuel Chang, violated the 2013 and 2014 budget laws.
In 2013, the loan guarantees signed by Chang, when expressed in Mozambican currency, amounted to over 43.4 billion meticais. The ceiling on loan guarantees in the 2013 budget law was 183.5 million meticais. Thus Chang signed guarantees that were 237 times the legal limit.
Rosario was thus saying either that he was ignorant about the budget law that, or that he did not care.
