Africa-Press – Mozambique. The defence lawyer for Angela Leao, one of the 19 people on trial before the Maputo City Court charged with crimes arising from the scandal of Mozambique’s “hidden debts” on Tuesday demanded that testimony given the previous day by witness Imran Issa, and which has a bearing on her client, should be scrubbed from the record because Leao was not in court when Issa was speaking.
It is indeed a principle of Mozambican law that accused persons have a right to hear evidence that directly concerns them. But the law also states that when this principle is breached those concerned must protest at once,
Judge Efigenio Baptista pointed out that Leao’s lawyer had been present throughout the Monday session, and had not intervened at all. It was too late to do so now.
“The law does not protect those who fall asleep”, he remarked, as he rejected the call to declare parts of Issa’s testimony null and void.
However, he promised to call Issa back to repeat his testimony, once Leao reappears in court. Leao has been absent from the hearings because of illness. At her own request, Leao was examined at Clinicare, a private clinic in central Maputo, which diagnosed her with “severe cranial trauma”.
Neither the prison management, not Baptista believed this diagnosis, and so insisted on a second opinion, this time from a public health unit. So Leao was examined again, at the Mavalane General Hospital, and Baptista announced that the staff there could find no sign of cranial trauma.
It is not known how long Leao will remain under medical care, before she is allowed to return to court. Baptista promised that when she is available, he will rearrange the trial calendar so that Issa can be recalled.
The defence lawyers also strongly objected to Issa, who is himself a lawyer, revealing activities of several of his clients that would normally be covered by the duty of confidentiality that lawyers have towards their clients.
Between 2013 and 2019 Issa had, at one time or another, represented several of the accused in the “hidden debts” trial including not only Angela Leao, but also the former head of economic intelligence in the security service (SISE), Antonio Carlos do Rosario, and businessman Fabiao Mabunda, whose account was allegedly used to channel bribes from the Abu Dhabi based group, Privinvest, to Leao and her husband. Gregorio Leao, the frmer General Director of SISE.
Baptista pointed out that, in order to lift their duty of confidentiality towards their clients. Lawyers must apply for authorisation from the Mozambican Bar Association (OAM). Issa had done this on 29 September, and the OAM had replied on the same day, granting the authorisation.
Issa had thus acted within the law, and if the defence lawyers did not know this, Baptista added, it merely showed that they did not consult documents relevant to the trial that arrived regularly at his registry office. (Like the courtroom itself, the judge’s office has been improvised on the premises of the Maputo top security prison).
Everybody involved in the trial knew who was due to testify and when. “Nobody can say they didn’t see Imran Issa’s name on the list of witnesses”, said Baptista.
He suspected the defence lawyers raised this issue because of their personal disputes with the leadership of the OAM. “You should discuss this within the OAM, not in this courtroom”, said Baptista. “Don’t use this court, and the cameras that are covering this trial, to express your discontent with the OAM”.
One of the lawyers, Alice Mabota, protested that she had been practising law since 1973, and she had never seen anything like Monday’s trial session. “Just because you’ve been doing things the same way for the past 50 years doesn’t make it right,” retorted Baptista.
Issa said he was both a collaborator with SISE (recruited by Antonio do Rosario), and a lawyer who dealt with all the legal affairs of the various companies established by Rosario, and which the prosecution believes are part of a complex money laundering scheme run by Privinvest and its SISE accomplices.
Issa refused to give any details about his SISE activities, but he made clear that every significant decision concerning the companies was taken by Rosario and that boards of directors and shareholder meetings were mere decoration.
Rosario also used him as a spy. When the Attorney-General’s Office (PGR) accused Fabiao Mabunda of money laundering and other crimes linked to the “hidden debts” in late 2018, Rosario told Issa to accompany Mabunda to his interrogation at the PGR offices and report back. He did so at a meeting held in a Maputo restaurant with Rosario and Gregorio and Angela Leao. This meeting could be used as evidence of the criminal conspiracy that is one of charges against most of the accused.
Issa said he met with Mabunda several times, and during these meetings Mabunda revealed details of the money received from Privinvest, which amounted to about 9.1 million dollars. His building company MMocambique Construcoes had signed two contracts with Logistics International, part of the Privinvest group.
The building work to be done by Mabunda’s company with this money never happened, and Mabunda had never set eyes on the Privinvest official he named as Fauzi (believed to be Mohamed Fauzi) who signed the contracts in the name of Logistics International. Mabunda told Issa he received the contracts only so that he could show them to his bank as justification for receiving millions of dollars.
Mabunda said that the money really belonged to Angela Leao. “He said he’d never had any contact with Privinvest, and he’d never done any work for that group”, recalled Issa.
Issa also denied the claim made by Mabunda, that during the interrogation at the PGR, he, Issa, had been threatened by Deputy Attorney-General Alberto Paulo.
“The interrogation lasted for more than ten hours and at no time was I threatened by Attorney Alberto Paulo”, said Issa.
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