Maputo — For the fourth consecutive week, the right-wing Maputo paper "Zambeze" has targeted Attorney-General Augusto Paulino, with claims that he is the accused in a case before the Supreme Court involving the alleged theft of 300,000 meticais (about 12,500 US dollars).

There is a problem for the "Zambeze" campaign, however - which is that all charges against Paulino were dropped months ago.

The allegations against Paulino were made immediately it became known, in July, that President Armando Guebuza wished to sack the former Attorney-General, Joaquim Madeira, and give Paulino the job. The timing was most suspicious, and made it look as though the embezzlement charge was merely a crude attempt to stop Paulino becoming Attorney-General.

The matter first went to the Supreme Council of the Judicial Magistrature (CSMJ), the body responsible for disciplining judges (since Paulino had been the presiding judge of the Maputo Provincial Court at the time of the alleged theft). The CSMJ set up a commission of inquiry, which investigated the allegation and found there was no evidence against Paulino.

But then, in a further delaying tactic, the Attorney-General's Office sent a formal criminal accusation against Paulino to the Supreme Court (the only court which can hear cases against senior judges). The case collapsed, and the prosecution dropped the charges.

But now, some four months later, "Zambeze" insists that the case is ongoing and that Paulino is still a suspect. Papers which have pointed out that there are no longer any charges, notably a second weekly, "Magazine Independente" (MI), have effectively been accused in the pages of "Zambeze" of lying to their readers.

Last week, "Zambeze" put a former deputy attorney-general, Isabel Rupia, on its front page with the claim "I never dropped the charges" (against Paulino). This week, "Zambeze" journalist Alvarito de Carvalho, the man who wrote the previous articles libelling Paulino, alleges "there is no proof" of any dispatch from prosecutors dropping the charges.

Yet on Thursday morning it took AIM just a two minute phone call to the Supreme Court to establish that the charges were indeed dropped, and that the dispatch dropping the charges was signed by assistant attorney-general Erasmo Nhavoto.

Rupia's outburst was irrelevant since nobody had ever suggested that she signed the dispatch. Furthermore, by the time the dispatch was issued, she had already lost her post as an assistant attorney-general. Indeed all six assistant attorney-generals were dismissed, in line with new legislation implementing the provisions of the 2004 Constitution on the Attorney-General's Office.

This states that assistant attorney-generals must apply for the job through a public recruitment process open to all Mozambican citizens over the age of 35, with a law degree, and with ten years experience. Nhavoto was the first assistant attorney-general to be appointed who met these requirements.

The question that arises is: if AIM can find out, after just one phone call, that the charges against Paulino really have been dropped, why is "Zambeze" still flogging this very dead horse ?

The answer is clearly that this is not journalism at all, but a concerted campaign against Paulino. It is a campaign that may prove very expensive. For Paulino's patience has finally snapped, and he has issued libel writs against "Zambeze", against its director, Fernando Veloso, and against Alvarito de Carvalho.

"Zambeze" goes out of its way to court libel suits. Last year it was found guilty of libeling Francisco Machambisse, the election agent for Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the former rebel movement Renamo, in the 2004 Presidential elections. A "Zambeze" columnist, Edwin Hounnou, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, claimed that Machambisse had taken a bribe of a million dollars from the ruling Frelimo Party. This supposedly explained why the Renamo appeal against the election results was delivered late.

Since Hounnou admitted he had no evidence for his claim, the guilty verdict was inevitable. The court awarded damages of 80,000 meticais (3,200 dollars) to Machambisse, not yet paid because "Zambeze" has lodged an appeal. The appeal has no chance, but there is no procedure for throwing out vexatious appeals, and so "Zambeze" can at least win several months (or, given the slowness of the system, even years).

The paper is also being sued by prominent lawyer, Albano Silva, husband of Prime Minister Luisa Diogo, over articles written by Carvalho in March 2007. Carvalho regurgitated suggestions made by a former colonial administrator, Faruk Gadit, that Silva had used a loan from the public treasury to buy a "luxury apartment" in Lisbon.

The story was absurd. Silva had no difficulty in producing documents showing that the money for the Lisbon flat had been obtained, not from the Mozambican treasury, but from a loan granted by the Portuguese state bank, the Caixa Geral de Depositos (CGD).

Gadit, echoed by "Zambeze", had exaggerated the sums of money involved. He claimed the cost of the flat, purchased in 2001 for 30 million Portuguese escudos, was "equivalent to 1.8 million dollars". Five minutes surfing on the Internet would have shown "Zambeze" that the exchange rate of the escudo in 2001 was 224 to the dollar. The true value of the flat was thus just 133,870 dollars - less than a tenth of what Gadit and "Zambeze" had claimed.

The treasury loan (for 406,000 dollars) went, not to Silva, but to Inagrico, a company in which he holds a 25 per cent stake. Neither Silva, not anyone else in the company could have diverted this loan into their pockets, since it was granted in goods, not cash. The money was Japanese aid channeled through the Treasury. Inagrico produced a shopping list, international tenders were held, and the goods were acquired. Since no money ever entered an Inagrico account, it was physically impossible for the company's owners to steal it. Furthermore, Inagrico has been paying off the treasury loan: Silva told AIM that the final payment was made in December

Nonetheless, Gadit took the case to the Central Anti-Corruption Office (GCCC), which operates out of the Attorney-General's Office. On 19 November, GCCC prosecutor Carolina Azarias informed Gadit that the GCCC could find nothing criminal in Diogo and Silva acquiring a flat in Lisbon.

Azarias wrote "from the analysis of the facts, it is concluded that there is no link between the loan granted to Inagrico and the building acquired by Albano Silva. The records shows no sign that Luisa Diogo and Albano Silva have committed the crime of corruption or any other crime".

This document is a severe embarrassment for "Zambeze" and Alvarito de Carvalho, since in December Carvalho wrote that Paulino had abolished the GCCC. In his latest article, Carvalho changes his story slightly: now he writes that Paulino "de-activated" the GCCC shortly after taking office, and then "re-activated" it.

But Paulino could neither abolish nor "de-activate" the GCCC, since this body was set up by a law passed by the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic. Thus only the Assembly has the power to dissolve the GCCC.

Paulino did, however try to make the GCCC work by stripping it of cases that do not fit the legal definition of corruption. He told a meeting of the Consultative Council of the Attorney-General's Office, held in early December, that the GCCC had to concentrate on its main task - so he had removed from the GCCC "cases of forgery, swindles, murders, and theft among others".

With the Lisbon story discredited, all that remains is a claim by Gadit that a house in central Maputo was irregularly attributed by the state housing agency, APIE, to the Prime Minister's son, Nelson Diogo Silva. Gadit wants this house for himself, on the grounds that he was a tenant there before Mozambican independence in 1975.

Like all rented housing, this building was nationalized in 1976. Any sitting tenant should have signed a contract with APIE, but no such contract exists in Gadit's name. The GCCC could not see that this had anything to do with corruption, and advised Gadit that if he wanted to contest ownership of this house, then he should lodge an action in the relevant court (presumably the Administrative Tribunal, since Gadit would be opposing an administrative act by a state body, APIE).