Maputo — The mysterious finances of Vicente Ramaya, the former bank manager who is one of those charged with ordering the murder of investigative journalist Carlos Cardoso, occupied centre stage at the Maputo City Court on Friday morning.
Questioned for the second time by the court, Ramaya claimed that, prior to his arrest in March 2001, his monthly income was around 1,000 US dollars a month - and some of that was provided by his in-laws.
This sum can hardly account for the behaviour of someone who lives in the plushest part of Maputo, drives a BMW, flies repeatedly to the northern city of Pemba, and can afford to offer his consultancy services to clients free of charge.
It is widely believed that Ramaya became rich on the proceeds of the 1996 fraud in the country's largest bank, the BCM. The fraud occurred at his branch, involving the extraction of 144 billion meticais (14 million dollars at the exchange rate of the time) via accounts opened in the names of members and associates of the Abdul Satar family. The prosecution argues that Cardoso's pursuit of this case was a motive for Ramaya, and the brothers Ayob and Momade Abdul Satar, to order the assassination.
Ramaya told the court he has a legitimate, registered consultancy company operating out of his house (though at no stage did he give this company's name). But when asked about this company's clients, he named just two people - Candida Cossa and Levy Muthemba - and said that he had not charged either of them for the work he did.
He said he worked on a failed bid by Cossa to secure exclusive representation of Nestle products. this would have required a banker's guarantee of 3.5 million rands (350,000 US dollars), "and the banks we contacted didn't have that financial capacity".
Ramaya said he had done unspecified consultancy work for free for Levy Muthemba's travel agency, Recil. Muthemba is the brother of Octavio Muthemba, former chairman of the Austral Bank, under whose stewardship the bank came close to ruin. Companies owned by Levy Muthemba were among the many debtors to Austral as the bank approached collapse in 2001.
The spectacle of a former bank manager working for free puzzled the presiding judge, Augusto Paulino. "So your company survives without charging for its services ?", he asked.
Ramaya then claimed he had a portfolio of "about ten" clients, some of whom did pay, but he declined to name them.
Much of the questioning concerned a loan of 450,000 dollars made by Candida Cossa to a Pemba businessman, Zulfikar Sulemane, via Ramaya. He had said in November that he was "the guarantor" of the loan (which would have made him legally liable in case of default), but on Friday he downgraded his role to that of "intermediary". This loan did not involve anything as complicated as a cheque, or a bank transfer. Instead Candida Cossa just brought sackfuls of dollar bills round to Ramaya's house, and Zulfikar then appeared to collect them. The loan was given in four installments - three of 100,000 dollars, and one of 150,000.
When Cossa appeared on the witness stand later in the day, Paulino asked for the source of this money. She claimed it came from the sale of two houses - again, for cash, and without the involvement of any banks.
Zulfikar was supposed to repay the money in 90 days, by September 1999. Ramaya said he was certain that this would happen, because it was "guaranteed" that the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a branch of the World Bank, would lend 700,000 dollars for an "industrial project" of Zulfikar.
He claimed he had visited the World Bank office in Maputo, and the representative, "a Brazilian", told him there would be no problems.
But there was an insuperable problem: the project failed its Environmental Impact Assessment, and so no money at all was forthcoming from the IFC. Ramaya seemed very perplexed at this turn of events - but anyone who knows how the World Bank operates
could have told him that no loan is final until the project has been approved environmentally.
Furthermore the Maputo office of the World Bank cannot dictate to the IFC (and the representative at the time was not a Brazilian, but a cautious Uruguayan named James Coates).
When Zulfikar proved unable to pay, Ramaya flew to Pemba where a local attorney told him that Zulfikar was deeply in debt to other institutions, including the BCM. Ramaya claimed to be greatly surprised "because he was one of our best clients when I was at the bank".
Ramaya said he visited Pemba three times, and the end result was that Zulfikar signed a legal document admitting owing the money to Cossa, and offering five buildings that he owned as guarantees for eventual payment. Ramaya admitted that buildings in Pemba are not much use to Candida Cossa in Maputo, who just wants her money back. He said the buildings are currently in the possession of the chairman of the Pemba Commercial Association.
This is a wonderful tale of caring and generous business people, who do months of consultancy work without charging, who offer interest-free loans to people they have never met before, just because they are on friendly terms with the middleman, who hand over, and receive, sackfuls of cash without asking any awkward questions. It is a story as charming as "Alice in Wonderland" and with the same relationship to the real world.
Failing to make much sense of Ramaya's business transactions, the court turned to his dealings with the BCM after he was sacked following the 1996 fraud. Ramaya boasted of regular meetings with "senior staff" of the BCM, who would pass him information about "other frauds".
He claimed he was working on these "other frauds" with top attorneys, but all his efforts were frustrated, when President Joaquim Chissano sacked Attorney-General Antonio Namburete in July 2000, and there was a complete change of personnel in the Attorney-General's office. But some of these "other frauds" dated to 1994 and 1995, when Ramaya was still working at the BCM. Why had he not denounced them at the time ?, Paulino asked. "Was it only when your own fraud was uncovered, that you went on to investigate other frauds ?" As for his relations with leading attorneys, Paulino summarised this as "somebody accused of committing a crime advising those who are investigating the crime".
Ramaya also insisted that had "proof" that the BCM's lawyer, Albano Silva, had gone to the Civil Prison in central Maputo to persuade prosecution witness Osvaldo Muianga ("Dudu") to change his statement in order to incriminate Ramaya.
When asked the nature of this proof, it turned out to be conversations in the top security prison (B.O.) at third hand.
Some of the prison guards work at both jails. Ramaya claimed that guards from the Civil Prison had seen Silva with Muianga, and when they came to the B.O., they told other prisoners (whom he named as Domingos Mendes and Joao Horacio da Conceicao), who in turn told him.
Although he had not observed the alleged Silva/Muianga encounter, and had not spoken to anyone who had, Ramaya insisted that "this information is correct". (Silva has already denied any such meeting with Muianga).
