Maputo — Six members of the management of the Maputo Association of Transport Operators (ATROMAP) will go on trial on 14 April, accused of misappropriating about 1.5 billion meticais (about 62,500 US dollars) belonging to the association, reports Wednesday's issue of the daily paper "Noticias".

The co-accused include Eugenio Filimone, the chairman, along with his deputy, Samuel Nhatitima, the treasurer, Paulo Aniceto, the chairman of the supervisory board, Antonio Santique, and the first secretary and chairman of the board of the general meeting, Mussagi Gopal and Antonio Caetano Beula.

The stolen money came from the associates' contributions, fines, the payment for licenses and other sources.

Investigations found that the ATROMAP financial records are either non-existent or disorganized. It was also found that bank deposits show less than the money collected, which, according to the prosecution, meant that the accused were able to misappropriate large sums.

Interviewed by the paper, Filimone, who is awaiting his trial in freedom, denied all the accusations, claiming that this is all part of a conspiracy. He also claims that he has not yet received any summons to appear in court.

ATROMAP associates also accuse the management of unfair distribution of 100 minibuses, acquired for the sum of 2.5 million US dollars. Sources within the association claim that in fact only 2.4 million US dollars were used to buy the vehicles, and Filimone failed to explain how the remaining 100,000 dollars were used.

The associates claim that Filimone could account for only 90 of the 100 vehicles, and even those were "unfairly distributed", benefiting some people who are neither members of ATROMAP nor even operating in the area of passenger transport, but who were simply his friends or relatives.

They say that Filimone took five of the vehicles for himself, while allocating another five to Mussagi, three to Nhatitima, two to ATROMAP lawyer Jose Albano Junior (who is also a legal advisor to the Transport Ministry), and one to the widow of the former Maputo City Road Transport director Jaime Muchanga.

Another alleged undue beneficiary, who received five of the minibuses was the businessman whose company, based in Beira, imported the said vehicles. His name was not revealed.

"I must say that the distribution criteria for the buses were not established by the Finance or the Transport Ministry.

They were defined by ATROMAP. We have decided to allocate the vehicles to transporters, not necessarily to the ATROMAP associates. We handed the vehicles to people operating in this activity. Thus, I cannot see anything abnormal in allocating vehicles to those people", declared Filimone.

According to the associates, the Finance and Transport Ministries have been informed of all these irregularities, but never took the issue seriously enough to carry out a thorough investigation.

However, the Finance Ministry did carry out an audit of ATROMAP accounts, where it found that some records do not exist, and those that do exist are incomplete and disorganized. The audit could not find any evidence to support the management's statements on how some of the money was used.

The auditors found no justifications for the use of over 889 million meticais of the association's moneys, and debts amounting to about 2.5 billion meticais in taxes.

But the prosecutor's charge sheet only mentions the 1.5 billion meticais, that the auditors also found to be missing.