5 May 2008
Maputo — After failing to assassinate prominent Mozambican lawyer Albano Silva, the crime syndicate that had stolen the equivalent of 14 million dollars from the BCM, the bank that he represented, used a mixture of threats and bribes in an attempt to persuade him to drop the BCM case and leave the country.
The Maputo City Court, hearing the case of six men accused of the 1999 attempt to assassinate Silva, heard how members of the Abdul Satar family, at the heart of the bank fraud, had used intermediaries to persuade Silva that it would be in his best interests to abandon the case.
Silva testified that on 1 June 2000, a man named Momede Shaid, contacted him with a message from Momad Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini"). Satar, who is accused of paying for the failed 1999 attempt on Silva's life, told Shaid that a second assassination attempt was being planned. Of course, Satar claimed he had nothing to do with this, and blamed "some prosecutors" who were furious with Silva because he had accused them of connivance with those who defrauded the BCM. He added that Silva should beware of a white Citi-Golf, linked to the plot.
Satar said he "regretted" the planned murder, because it would be blamed on him, his brother Ayob, and their close associate Vicente Ramaya, manager of the BCM branch where the fraud took place. The offer which Satar conveyed via Shaid (and which Silva regarded as a threat) was that Silva should leave the country, and Satar was willing to "help him financially to do so".
After passing the message on to Silva, Shaid met with Nini Satar again that evening. Satar added that Silva should also "distrust any meals he takes in restaurants". Shaid promptly passed on this poisoning threat to Silva.
Silva said he took these threats seriously, and stayed at home for the next three days. But on 2 June, a domestic servant hired to look after Silva's young daughter, saw a white Citi-Golf drive slowly past Silva's house. The car was clearly meant to be seen, for the driver deliberately waved to the servant. He was later identified as Paulo Estevao ("Dangerman"), head of security at Unicambios, the foreign exchange bureau owned by Ayob Abdul Satar, and another of those currently on trial.
That afternoon, and the following day, Silva's bodyguard and an aide-de-camp of his wife, deputy finance minister (now Prime Minister) Luisa Diogo, saw the white Citi-Golf driving repeatedly up and down Avenida do Zimbabwe, the nearest main road to Silva's house.
Also, according to a driver employed by Silva, Carlos Matsena, on 3 June, a white Citi-Golf, carrying at least two masked men, pursued him for several kilometres in a high speed chase before he could shake them off. Matsena had gone to the neighbourhood of Jardim to pick up Silva's daughter. But Silva himself frequently used this car, an Opel, and the masked men might have imagined that the lawyer was the passenger.
After these unnerving incidents, the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) arrested Dangerman, but failed to do their job properly. Silva accused PIC of failing to seize Dangerman's cell phone. Silva was convinced that the information in the cell phone memory could have helped in the investigations - but Dangerman was allowed to wipe it clean, and the police soon released him. When he was re-arrested some months later, it was in connection, not with the attempted murder, but with car theft.
The message sent via Shaid was not the first time an attempt had been made to bribe Silva, He said that when he was in Europe in January 2000 he received a phone call from Sidique Ali Gadit, a man related to the Abdul Satar family by marriage. Gadit told Silva that Ayob Satar was offering him half a million US dollars to drop the BCM case and not to return to Mozambique.
At this, Ayob Satar's lawyer, Domingos Arouca, protested. His client had been acquitted in the BCM fraud trial of 2004, and so it made no sense for him to try to bribe Silva to drop the case, Arouca claimed.
Silva retorted that the acquittal did not show that Ayob Satar had nothing to do with the fraud, merely that the judge considered the evidence insufficient and gave him the benefit of the doubt. Silva had no doubt at all. "The whole Abdul Satar family, from the parents downward, were all involved in the fraud!", he exclaimed.. Ayob was the only male member of the family who did not hold a fraudulent account at Ramaya's branch of the BCM, but that was only "a matter of family strategy", since when the rest of the family fled the country, they needed somebody to stay behind to look after their businesses.
An angry Arouca shouted "My client is innocent!", and for a moment the trial degenerated into a shouting match between the two lawyers.
Then Ayob Satar himself stood up in the dock and protested that Silva "has called me a thief!".
"I know that I've been found guilty in advance because his wife is the Prime Minister!", he exclaimed.
The judge, Dimas Marroa, took exception to this slur against the court, and pointed out that nobody was suggesting that the marital arrangements of Satar's lawyer were of any relevance.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
