Africa-Press – Mozambique. The public prosecutor in the main hidden debts case on Monday denounced the “loss” of 34 pages of the indictment relating to facts imputed to the former head of the intelligence service (SISE).
“I confess that I will have to ask questions without the necessary documentary support, because documents from the indictment have been misplaced,” Sheila Marrengula said.
Marrengula was speaking during the questioning of the accused, António Carlos do Rosário.
The magistrate explained that part of the case documents (which has about 20 thousand pages total) removed from the indictment are the indictment records of Judge Ivandra Uamusse, who intervened at that stage, and another part is related to documents that the Public Prosecutor added to the records.
Other misappropriated documents are some that had been attached to the case file by the defendant’s lawyer, Alexandre Chivale.
The judge trying the case, Efigénio Baptista, considered the situation serious, and announced measures to ascertain the circumstances of the loss.
Baptista said that the court would resort to copies of the records that may be in the possession of the notary’s office.
The questioning of António Carlos do Rosário, recruited by the Mozambican secret service at the age of 18, is the longest so far recorded in the trial.
The accused entered the second week of his hearing today, when he has yet to be questioned by the judge, the Mozambican Bar Association (OAM), which is acting as an assistant in the case, and defence lawyers.
The former SISE boss who was also director of the three companies that benefited from the hidden debt money is accused of having received bribes worth US$8.9 million (7.6 million euros) for his role in the project to protect the Exclusive Economic Zone and in the creation of the companies.
The court considers that the companies and the project were used as a front for the mobilisation of the loans.
The Mozambican justice system accuses the 19 defendants in the main case of the hidden debts of having formed a “gang” and siphoned off US$2.7 billion (2.28 billion euros) from the Mozambican state – a figure that is higher than the US$2.2 million so far known in the case – raised from international banks via guarantees provided by the government.
The hidden debts were contracted between 2013 and 2014 from the British subsidiaries of investment banks Credit Suisse and VTB by Mozambican state companies Proindicus, Ematum and MAM.
The loans were secretly endorsed by the Frelimo government, led by the President of the Republic at the time, Armando Guebuza, without the knowledge of parliament and the Administrative Court.
