{"id":6278,"date":"2021-09-22T18:16:42","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T18:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/?p=6278"},"modified":"2021-09-22T16:55:57","modified_gmt":"2021-09-22T16:55:57","slug":"hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report","title":{"rendered":"Hidden debts: Money laundering at the foreign exchange bureau \u2013 AIM report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\">Mozambique<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>One of the 19 defendants facing charges in connection with the scandal of Mozambique\u2019s \u201chidden debts\u201d on Tuesday admitted to the Maputo City Court that he had allowed his employers in a foreign exchange bureau to manipulate an account he had opened at the country\u2019s largest commercial bank, the Millennium-BIM.<\/p>\n<p>Khessaujee Pulchand had worked as a cashier at the Africambios foreign exchange bureau in central Maputo, an institution which looms large in the picture of money laundering drawn by the prosecution.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, businessman Fabiao Mabunda told the court a complex tale of transactions of many millions of dollars, euros and meticais much of which his company, MMocambique Construcoes, had undertaken at the request of Angela Leao, the wife of Gregorio Leao, the former head of the Security and Intelligence Service (SISE).<\/p>\n<p>The company, in 2013, received almost nine million US dollars from the Abu Dhabi based group Privinvest. Because Privinvest supposedly wanted the money back, Mabunda took millions of meticais out of his bank account and changed it into dollars. He did some of this money changing at Africambios.<\/p>\n<p>The complex scheme Mabunda outlined to the court was that he turned meticais received from Angela Leao into dollars, which he used to pay back Privinvest. The funds from Privinvest in the MMocambique account were used to pay other businesses and various expenses stipulated by Leao.<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday Pulchand admitted that he knew Mabunda as a client of Africambios, but he staunchly denied knowing MMocambique Construcoes or having any dealings with this company.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Efigenio Baptista then showed him the statements from his Millennium-BIM account. These showed repeated payments into the account from MMocambique Construcoes. Some were in the form of cheques, but two of the largest, for 4.92 and 6.58 million meticais, were bank transfers.<\/p>\n<p>Pulchand admitted that the cheques and the bank transfers were genuine, but continued to insist that he had no dealings with MMocambique Construcoes,<\/p>\n<p>He said that in 2004, his employers, the owners of Africambios, insisted that he, and other Africambios workers, open bank accounts.<\/p>\n<p>Pulchand explained that his identity documents were used to open the account, which was in his name, but the Africambios management operated the account, and controlled the cheque book.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you don\u2019t know MMocambique Construcoes, how come you are handling its cheques\u201d, asked Baptista.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause I was told to\u201d, replied Pulchand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo you didn\u2019t know what was happening with your own account\u201d, mused the judge, wondering how Pulchand could ever prove anything about the account.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you thought this was normal?\u201d, he asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t know how to reply\u201d, said Pulchand \u2013 but he added that opening the account was a condition for keeping his job at Africambios.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutor Sheila Marrengula said that, between January 2013 and June 2018, over 359.43 million meticais (over 5.6 million dollars at the current exchange rate) had entered Pulchand\u2019s BIM account.<\/p>\n<p>He said he believed this figure was accurate, and \u201cI assume the money has to do with Africambios\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI didn\u2019t operate the account\u201d, he insisted. \u201cThey told me when I had to sign the cheques\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Pulchand admitted he had no idea of the origin of the funds \u2013 he just did as his employers ordered.<\/p>\n<p>He accepted the prosecution\u2019s argument that, in reality. Africambios had operated with two sets of accounts \u2013 an official one, shown to the financial authorities, and the real one, based on Pulchand\u2019s BIM account.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t know anything\u201d, he claimed. \u201cWe just obeyed the orders of the boss\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid you think this was legal?\u201d, asked Marrengula.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the time I wasn\u2019t aware of the practice\u201d, he replied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Mozambique. One of the 19 defendants facing charges in connection with the scandal of Mozambique\u2019s \u201chidden debts\u201d on Tuesday admitted to the Maputo City Court that he had allowed his employers in a foreign exchange bureau to manipulate an account he had opened at the country\u2019s largest commercial bank, the Millennium-BIM. Khessaujee Pulchand [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":6277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,8,16],"tags":[233,281,283],"class_list":["post-6278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-community","category-homepage-english","category-twitter","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-mozambique","tag-mozambique"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Hidden debts: Money laundering at the foreign exchange bureau \u2013 AIM report - Mozambique<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"One of the 19 defendants facing charges in connection with the scandal of Mozambique\u2019s \u201chidden debts\u201d on Tuesday admitte ...\" \/>\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\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hidden debts: Money laundering at the foreign exchange bureau \u2013 AIM report\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the 19 defendants facing charges in connection with the scandal of Mozambique\u2019s \u201chidden debts\u201d on Tuesday admitte ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report\" \/>\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=\"2021-09-22T18:16:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/sites\/64\/2021\/09\/img-614b60015761b.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=\"3 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\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Hidden debts: Money laundering at the foreign exchange bureau \u2013 AIM report\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-09-22T18:16:42+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report\"},\"wordCount\":612,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/sites\/64\/2021\/09\/img-614b60015761b.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Mozambique\",\"Mozambique\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"community\",\"homepage-english\",\"twitter\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/mozambique\/all-news\/hidden-debts-money-laundering-at-the-foreign-exchange-bureau-aim-report\",\"name\":\"Hidden debts: Money laundering at the foreign exchange bureau \u2013 AIM report - 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