Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
18 November 2009
Maputo — Deolinda Matos, the first of the five accused to testify in the major corruption trial concerning the publicly owned Mozambique Airpoerts Company (ADM), on Tuesday adopted the Nuremburg defence - everything she had done, she claimed, was on the orders of her superiors.
Matos is the former managing director of the Mozambique Services Company (SMS), which is owned by ADM and by Mozambique Airlines (LAM). The prosecution argues that some of the 54 million meticais (around two million US dollars) allegedly stolen from ADM, was drained via the accounts of SMS.
Matos admitted that the hiring of Antonio Bulande, then the director of the office of Transport Minister Antonio Munguambe, as legal advisor to SMS was irregular.
She said he was hired because of verbal instructions from Maria Coito, chairperson of the SMS board, who was also commercial director of ADM. Coito told her that she was just passing on the instruction from the ADM chairperson, Diodino Cambaza, who also decreed that Bulande would receive a monthly salary of 1,100 US dollars for the fictitious post created for him at SMS.
Cambaza had supposedly told Coito that Bulande ought to work at ADM. But there was no vacancy for him there, and so the alternative was to place him in SMS, which happened on 30 April 2007. SMS didn't have the money to pay his salary, and so it was transferred from ADM. Some months later Bulande's salary rose to 1,750 dollars a month, which is the remuneration of a non-executive director at ADM.
"It was an imperative situation", claimed Matos, "because the order came from one of the shareholders".
After Bulande had been imposed on SMS, Matos received a letter addressed to Coito signed by the chief inspector in the Transport Ministry which spoke of the need "to stimulate the Ministry's staff", and proposed that Bulande be hired by SMS. The letter was accompanied by a favourable dispatch from Munguambe himself. Munguambe, Cambaza and Bulande are all co-accused in the case.
So did Bulande do any work for SMS? Matos said she was not aware of any legal advice given by Bulande to SMS, at least not in her presence. Indeed, the post was entirely superfluous given that SMS already had a contract with another company to provide legal services.
Thus a man who was already earning a senior civil servant's wage, running a Minister's office, was given an extra 1,750 dollars a month, from the coffers of a public company, for doing nothing.
As for why ADM was unable to pay Bulande directly, Matos explained that the former ADM financial director, Hermeneguildo Mavale, said that was "not convenient".
She admitted paying a cheque for a further 15,000 dollars to Bulande, but again claimed she did so on Cambaza's instructions. The money was an ADM loan to Bulande, so that he could pay housing and wedding expenses, but once again it was channeled through SMS.
A further 25,000 dollars was drained from ADM to the SMS account supposedly to pay for activities of the ruling Frelimo Party. Matos said Mavale told her the money was for Frelimo, and the order came from Cambaza.
Mavale told her that because the money was for "confidential expenses" the name of Frelimo should not appear on the cheque. Instead it was made out to a certain Jesualdo Massango. Matos said she did not suspect that there might be anything illicit in this arrangement.
It was later discovered that this cheque had nothing to do with Frelimo. Instead Cambaza used it to buy a farm in Marracuene district, about 30 kilometres north of Maputo. Jesualdo Massango was the former owner of the farm. He only wanted 20,000 dollars, and so when the cheque was cashed the extra 5,000 dollars went straight into Cambaza's pocket.
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