Maputo — Contrary to initial reports, Mozambique's Supreme Court has not endorsed the Maputo City Court's decision to throw out 48 of the 49 corruption charges against former Interior Minister Almerino Manhenje.

The announcement that Manhenje was being released on bail after 16 months of preventive detention was greeted in some parts of the media with undisguised glee, because it was seen as a slap in the face for the prosecution services headed by Attorney-General Augusto Paulino.

The unwarranted assumption was made that, if the Supreme Court was releasing Manhaenje, then it must have completely rejected the prosecution appeal against the February 2009 dispatch from City Court judge Octavio Chuma which threw out all but one of the charges. Even Paulino, interviewed by reporters on Wednesday, seemed to believe that this is what had happened.

"Chumbo!" (Failure!) gloats the one word front page headline in this week's issue of the weekly paper "Savana". The article inside the paper claims that the Supreme Court has issued "a certificate of incompetence" against Paulino's office, and that the credibility of Paulino himself is in question. The article simply assumes that, if Manhenje has been released, then Chuma's ruling must have been upheld, and 48 of the 49 charges dropped.

"Savana" would have been well advised to read the Supreme Court ruling before rushing into print. For in reality the Supreme Court, far from backing Chuma, partly over-ruled him and reinstated much of the original charge sheet. But it reorganized and rationalised the charges, bringing the number down to six.

Manhenje is now accused of two counts of violating budgetary legality. The first count refers to the former minister ordering the payment of 91.7 million old meticais to acquire telephones (fixed and mobile) and pay the phone bills for several senior Interior Ministry officials. This was allegedly to ensure the smooth operation of the ministry, but it was not covered by the budget.

Even more flagrant is the second count - which concerns Manhenje allegedly paying over 8.2 million meticais for his wife's phone bill. Not only was this not in the Ministry's budget, but Manhenje's wife was not even employed by the Ministry.

A third count overrules Chuma's decision that the authorisation of expenses amounting to 1.2 billion meticais was not illegal. The Supreme Court disagreed and has reinstated this charge. The payments seem to include wages paid to "ghost workers", fictitious employees of the Ministry.

Chuma had also dismissed the prosecution's charge that Manhenje had abused his authority by leasing two Ministry warehouses to the company INUPOL. Again the Supreme Court overruled him and has charged Manhenje with exceeding his authority.

INUPOL was set up to make uniforms for the police. The warehouse were leased to INUPOL because one of the company's shareholders, Chicamba Investments, had been set up by senior Interior Ministry officials, with Manhenje's authorisation.

The Ministry made monthly payments to INUPOL in 2004, which amounted to over 23.3 billion old meticais (about 847,000 US dollars). The prosecution regarded these payments as illict, but Chuma did not, and in this instance the Supreme Court agreed with Chuma.

The fifth count is that Manhenje benefitted illicitly from foodstuffs purchased from his co-accused Carlos Rosario Fidelis and Alvaro Nuno de Carvalho (the former financial director of the Interior Ministry and his deputy) to the sum of 551 million meticais. Manhenje had no right to this, since his ministerial salary contained a component to cover this sort of expenditure.

Finally, Manhenje is accused of accepting Ministry payment of air tickets for his wife and daughter, and an entry visa for his niece, amounting to 46.5 million meticais.

The total amount involved in the charges where money is mentioned is over 1.897 billion old meticais (about 69,000 US dollars at today's exchange rates, but considerably more when Manhenje was minister). This is a long way from Chuma's attempt to reduce the charge sheet to one crime involving 500,000 meticais (18,000 dollars).

The Supreme Court agreed with Chuma not to charge Manhenje with illicit payments of over 847 billion old meticais to repair vehicles belong to people who had nothing to do with the Ministry. There was also insufficient evidence concerning the alleged payment of almost 383 million old meticais of ministry funds as rent for a property owned by Manhenje in the plush Maputo neighbourhood of Sommerschield.

As for releasing Manhenje on bail of 350,000 meticais, the Supreme Court was acting in line with a decision it took several years ago that there is no such thing as a crime for which bail must always be denied.

When prosecutors talk of crimes for which bail is legally impossible, they are referring to an article in the Penal Procedural Code of 1931, which states that, if the crime carries a punishment of eight years imprisonment or more, then suspects must remain in preventive detention.

This clause is obviously unconstitutional, since it clearly violates the presumption of innocence that accused persons enjoy. However, neither the Mozambican parliament not any other body has yet taken the initiative to scrap the offending clause in the Code.

The question of releasing Manhenje on bail is thus quite separate from that of the charges that he faces.