Africa-Press – Mozambique. Angela Leao, one of the 19 people on trial before the Maputo City Court, charged with crimes related to the country’s greatest financial scandal, known as the case of the “hidden debts”, on Thursday denied any connection with Privinvest, the Abu Dhabi based group at the heart of the scandal.
Leao, who describes herself as a business person in the entertainment field, is also the wife of Gregorio Leao, who was General Director of the State Security and Intelligence Service (SISE) under the government of former President Armando Guebuza.
Judge Efigenio Baptista asked Leao that, if she really had no link with Privinvest, how was it that, on 12 May 2014, she sent an email to her co-accused, Fabiao Mabunda, asking whether he had received 1.7 million US dollars sent by Privinvest to his account.
This email came from Mabunda’s computer, and he had confrmed its authenticity in his testimony earlier in the week. But Leao denied ever sending the email. When the judge offered to show her the emauil, she refused to look at it.
“You knew about the money before the account holder (Mabunda) did”, said Baptista. “You had the document on the transfer issued by First Gulf Bank”.
But Leao stuck to her story – she insisted she knew nothing about Privinvest, and so the email must have been forged.
“You are saying that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has fabricated evidence”, remarked Baptista.
Leao claimed that the investigators have had people arrested “just because of my name”. Eight individuals had been charged solely because they were connected to her, she declared.
“They are trying to deceive the people!”, exclaimed Leao.
“Who?”, asked the judge.
“I don’t know”, she replied.
When Baptista asked her about houses she had purchased, apparently with the Privinvest money that had found its way into Mabunda’ account, Leao said “I am not going to speak about my private life here”.
She complained that at earlier stages in the investigation, the prosecutors had always asked about her real estate dealings, and not about the hidden debts.
The judge denied that any such distinction could be made. The public prosecutor, he pointed out, believed that the money used to buy the houses came from the debts, and so the court wanted to find out the source of her funds.
He noted that the scandal also involved the United States, since the money laundered by Privinvest went from First Gulf Bank in Abu Dhabi to a bank in New York, before ending up in Mabunda’s Maputo account. The Americans thus believed that their financial system had been abused.
Asked about the arrangements she had made whereby a three storey house she had bought in the Maputo suburb of Costa do Sol was being rented out for 160,000 meticais (about 2,500 US dollars) a month, Leao refused to give any names because she feared this could lead to further arrests.
Baptista pointed out that, although the state seized the house after Leao’s detention, the tenant had not been arrested, but was still living there and was still paying the rent.
The prosecution case is that the money sent by Privinvest via Fabiao Mabunda was, in reality, a large bribe (at least 9.5 million dollars) intended for Gregorio and Angela Leao.
Accused follows strategy of denial
Angela Leao, the wife of the General Director of Mozambique’s Security and Intelligence Service (SISE), under former President Armando Guebuza, on Thursday afternoon repeatedly denied that she has ever received money from the Abu Dhabi-based group, Privinvest but, on grounds of privacy, she refused to tell the Maputo City Court the source of her wealth.
Earlier in the week businessman Fabiao Mabunda had testified that the money he received from Privinvest (about 9.5 million dollars) was channeled to Angela Leao.
Now, in the 15th day of the trial of 19 people in connection with Mozambique’s largest ever financial scandal, known as the case of the “hidden debts”, Leao claimed that any dealing Mabunda may have had with Privinvest were nothing to do with her, and any email messages suggesting the contrary must have been forged.
On occasion, Leao was caught in an outright lie. She denied any relation with Antonio do Rosario, once the head of economic intelligence in SISE, and then the chairperson of all three fraudulent companies involved in the scandal, Proindicus, Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management),
But prosecutor Sheila Marrengula had no difficulty in showing that she, Rosario and the head of the SISE projects and studies office, Cipriano Mutota, were founding partners in a company called Josire Investments. Faced with the evidence of this company’s registration. Leao backtracked and said that it had never been active.
Marrengula asked her about contracts she had supposedly signed with Mulepe, another SISE company headed by Mutota, in which she became a partner. The prosecution had been asking her for these contracts for almost three years.
Leao said she could not provide the contracts, or any other paper work, because she was in prison. Marrengula pointed out that the prosecutors first asked for the contracts on 4 December 2018, and she was not detained until 7 March 2019. “You had three months to provide the documents, but you didn’t”, she said.
“In that period, I was being persecuted”, she claimed.
She admitted to making very large cash payments to Mabunda’s company, MMocambique Construcoes, which added up to at least 387 million meticais (over six million dollars at today’s exchange rate). She boasted that this was an understatement, and the real sums were much larger.
Leao denied that these sums had anything to do with Privinvest. Instead, they came from her own business activities. But she refused to give any details, on the grounds that such questions violated her private life.
As for the lack of any documentation for her alleged cash payments, Leao once again blamed this on the fact that she has been detained for more than two years. “I am under arrest. I am one of the living dead”, she said “I don’t know what I would find in my house”.
Repeatedly, Leao simply refused to answer questions on her financial affairs. She is within her right to refuse to answer – but those watching the trial may draw their own conclusion.
She complained of what she regarded as Marrengula’s “aggressive” line of questioning. “It’s as if she were saying ‘Yes! I’ve got her~!”, she alleged.
Judge Efigenio Baptista was not impressed. “This court is not a cat and mouse game”, he told Leao.
