Maputo — A witness in the Carlos Cardoso murder case on Wednesday demolished the story provided in the first week of the trial by one of the accused, money-lender Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"), according to which he was the victim of a conspiracy masterminded by the then managing director of the Polana Casino, Gerry Rouper.

The prosecution alleges that Satar, his brother Ayob, and their acquaintance, former bank manager Vicente Ramaya, ordered the November 2000 assassination of Carlos Cardoso, because of his investigations into their activities, published by his daily newsheet "Metical".

Nini Satar, however, argues that the murder charges were cooked up so that he would be detained and thus unable to collect money owed to him by the Casino.

Satar claimed that Rouper asked him for short term loans amounting to 10 billion meticais (about 420,000 US dollars).

Since Satar did not have this money immediately available, he arranged for a South African friend, named Bachir Abdullah, to make the loan. Satar would collect the repayment from the casino and take a "commission" for himself.

He claimed that the loans were made to Rouper in South Africa rands, to be repaid by the casino in post-dated cheques in the Mozambican currency, meticais. Satar said the casino ran into problems in meeting the repayment schedule. Only the first three billion meticais were repaid. The casino rescheduled the remaining seven billion meticais of debt - even so, when Satar tried to cash one of the cheques it bounced. For reasons Satar was quite unable to explain, the cheques are made out to his brother, Ayob.

Satar also alleged a conspiracy involving Rouper and Humberto Sartori, the Italian owner of the Kaya-Kwanga hotel, to extort money from him. He said they had first warned him that he would be killed, unless he paid them a million dollars. Later the threat was watered down - it became "pay us a million dollars, or we'll have you thrown in jail".

At various times over the past 18 months, Satar has tried to drag other people into this conspiracy, including the then head of the Maputo branch of the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC), Antonio Frangoulis, and even the judge trying the murder case, Augusto Paulino.

The whole story hinges on the cheques, and the Casino's alleged debt to Satar. So Satar's lawyer, Eduardo Jorge, on Tuesday called to the witness stand the chairman of the Polana Casino board of directors, Teodoro Waty (who is also the chairperson of the Maputo Municipal Assembly).

Waty was the first defence witness to speak, and presumably Jorge assumed he would bear out Satar's story.

But Jorge had not bothered to speak to Waty first, before summoning him to court. In reality Waty turned into a succinct and effective witness for the prosecution.

Waty told the court that Rouper, and the casino's financial manager, Phillip Nevitt, were sacked in early 2001 for "unwise management practices".

He said they were criticised for making unwise loans, not for seeking loans: in other words, under the management the casino was lending money, not borrowing it. Waty denied there had been any cash flow problems, any need for short term loans. "The information we had did not indicate any financial difficulties at the casino", he said. "We honoured all our commitments to our creditors, and paid all our taxes".

Sacking Rouper and Nevitt took a few months, he said - but "as from February 2001, Rouper was not effectively in charge".

The arrest of Satar occurred in late March 2001.

Waty admitted that the cheques, totalling seven billion meticais certainly looked like Polana Casino cheques, and the signatures they bore seemed to be those of Rouper and Nevitt. "We are investigating the matter", he said.

The first Waty had known about the cheques, and the casino's alleged debt to Satar, was when Eduardo Jorge wrote to him about the matter in June of this year. In August, the lawyer sent Waty photocopies of the cheques. The casino board had not replied to that letter, because it was still analysing the cheques.

Did the casino recognise the cheques ?, Jorge asked. "If we recognised them, we would have replied", responded Waty.

If there was never any short term loan granted by Satar, and thus no debt from the casino, then the claim that Satar was arrested to stop him collecting the money collapses.