{"id":14185,"date":"2022-02-16T16:00:39","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T16:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/?p=14185"},"modified":"2022-02-16T15:43:42","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T15:43:42","slug":"mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday","title":{"rendered":"Former president to testify in \u2018hidden debts\u2019 trial on Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Mozambique. <\/strong><\/span>Former Mozambique president, Armando Guebuza, is on Thursday to testify as a witness in the trial of the hidden debt case, so becoming the first former head of state the country\u2019s history to be heard in court.<\/p>\n

Guebuza\u2019s participation has been authorised by Mozambique\u2019s Council of State, which responded to a request from the Supreme Court, as mandated by law when it comes to hearing a former president.<\/p>\n

When he takes his seat in the tent that the Maputo City Judicial Court has set up at the city\u2019s Maximum Security Penitentiary Establishment (EPMS) \u2013 popularly known as the BO \u2013 to ensure there is the space to stage the mega-trial, the former head of state (who served from 2005 to 2015) will be the protagonist in the most awaited hearing in this case.<\/p>\n

Public prosecutors have called on Guebuza to testify because as president he was also head of the government that issued guarantees that allowed public enterprises Empresa Mo\u00e7ambicana de Atum (Ematum), Pro\u00edndicus and Mozambique Asset Management (MAM) to borrow $2.7 billion (\u20ac2.3 million) from foreign banks without informing parliament or existing creditors.<\/p>\n

The former head of state has already been questioned by a deputy attorney general, in the pre-trial phase of the case, and by a parliamentary committee of enquiry, in 2016.<\/p>\n

Although the findings of the parliamentary committee of enquiry were not made public or debated in a full session, part of Guebuza\u2019s statements were published by some media outlets, based on information passed on by members of parliament who spoke under anonymity. Among these, Guebuza\u2019s statement to the committee that he would do \u201ceverything again\u201d in the process that led to the hidden debts, if the circumstances that dictated the need for the loans were repeated, was widely commented upon in public opinion.<\/p>\n

The former head of state is reported to have told the committee that the country was at war, with government forces faces the guerrillas of the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo), the country\u2019s main opposition party, due to the political and military crisis that flared up in the wake of the contested 2009 general elections, which he said required the state to equip itself to prevent the confrontations from spreading.<\/p>\n

The discovery of huge natural gas reserves in Cabo Delgado province, in the north of the country, he is reported to have argued, could attract insurgent movements that could call into question the country\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n

It is in this context that the current fighting in Cabo Delgado, with armed groups that the authorities class as terrorists clashing with government forces, has been framed.<\/p>\n

A former director of economic intelligence for Mozambique\u2019s State Information and Security Service (SISE), Ant\u00f3nio Carlos do Ros\u00e1rio, who is a defendant in the case, has stated in court that the companies that received the money from the hidden debts had a military component, in addition to the commercial dimension of their activity, and that some of the bank loans went to purchase defence equipment.<\/p>\n

Guebuza is to testify after his eldest son, Armando Ndambi Guebuza, was questioned as a defendant in the case.<\/p>\n

Ndambi Guebuza told the court that his father\u2019s successor as head of state, Filipe Nyusi, should also be heard by the court, because he was minister of national defence and coordinator of the Defence and Security Forces (SDS) operational command that approved the Integrated Monitoring and Protection System (SIMP) for the country\u2019s the exclusive economic zone.<\/p>\n

The prosecution considers that the SIMP was the pretext found by those who set up the hidden debts scheme to mobilise the equivalent of \u20ac2.3 billion to finance a gigantic corruption scheme.<\/p>\n

Ant\u00f3nio do Ros\u00e1rio and Greg\u00f3rio Le\u00e3o, a former director of SISE and also a defendant, have also indicated Nyusi as having actively participated in the approval of the SIMP and in finding the banks that disbursed the funding.<\/p>\n

The judge in the case, Efig\u00e9nio Baptista, has said that the investigation found no evidence of crimes committed by Nyusi and Guebuza, and that the accounts of the former head of state and his family had all been traced. Baptista noted that evidence was found that only Ndambi Guebuza received $33 million from Privinvest, the shipyard group accused of making bribe payments funded by money from the hidden debts.<\/p>\n

Armando Guebuza will be the first former president to be heard in court in Mozambique. On social media there is already talk that the country will all but grind to a halt to watch him live on television during the broadcast of his interrogation as a declarant.<\/p>\n

Guebuza will be the last declarant to be heard in the trial, followed by the scheduling of the dates for closing arguments and the reading of the sentence.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Mozambique<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Mozambique. Former Mozambique president, Armando Guebuza, is on Thursday to testify as a witness in the trial of the hidden debt case, so becoming the first former head of state the country\u2019s history to be heard in court. Guebuza\u2019s participation has been authorised by Mozambique\u2019s Council of State, which responded to a request […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":14184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,8,12,16],"tags":[233,281,283],"class_list":["post-14185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-head-lines","category-homepage-english","category-policy","category-twitter","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-mozambique","tag-mozambique"],"yoast_head":"\nFormer president to testify in \u2018hidden debts\u2019 trial on Thursday - Mozambique<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Former Mozambique president, Armando Guebuza, is on Thursday to testify as a witness in the trial of the hidden debt cas ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Former president to testify in \u2018hidden debts\u2019 trial on Thursday\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Former Mozambique president, Armando Guebuza, is on Thursday to testify as a witness in the trial of the hidden debt cas ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mozambique\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-02-16T16:00:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/sites\/64\/2022\/02\/img-620d158733acb.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"730\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"438\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Former president to testify in \u2018hidden debts\u2019 trial on Thursday\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-02-16T16:00:39+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday\"},\"wordCount\":815,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/sites\/64\/2022\/02\/img-620d158733acb.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Mozambique\",\"Mozambique\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"head lines\",\"homepage-english\",\"policy\",\"twitter\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/mozambique-former-president-to-testify-in-hidden-debts-trial-on-thursday\",\"name\":\"Former president to testify in \u2018hidden debts\u2019 trial on Thursday - 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