Maputo — Businesswoman Candida Cossa, who has become a key witness in the Carlos Cardoso murder trial, has changed her story about the seven cheques that are central to the defence of one of those accused of the assassination, loan shark Momade Assife Abdul Satar ("Nini").
But asked about the cheques by judge Augusto Paulino on Friday, Cossa refused to give her new version, and just referred the court to the interrogation she had undergone at the hands of the Public Prosecutors Office on Monday.
The problem is that in addition to this trial, in which Satar and five others are charged, there is a second case, in which one of the accused is Nyimpine Chissano, the oldest son of President Joaquim Chissano. This case is still at the stage of preliminary investigation, and is thus sub judice: it was as part of this case that Cossa was questioned on Monday.
According to Nini Satar, these seven cheques, all from Nyimpine Chissano's company, Expresso Tours, and signed by him, but with the space for the payee left blank, were security for a loan from Satar. He told the court that Chissano asked him for a loan of 1.2 billion meticais (about 50,000 US dollars), but stipulated that this money should be paid to Anibal dos Santos Junior ("Anibalzinho").
Anibalzinho is accused of organising the death squad that assassinated Cardoso on 22 November 2000. Satar says that it was only when he met Anibalzinho in 2001 in the top security jail that he realised the money was payment for a contract killing.
The seven cheques total 1.29 billion meticais (the extra 90 million being Satar's "commission"), and were never cashed. Satar has delivered them to the court as evidence for his story.
When he testified, Nyimpine Chissano admitted signing the cheques but claimed he had given them to Candida Cossa as repayment of a loan. She had supposedly lent money to Expresso Tours when it faced cash flow problems, and had difficulty in paying for unspecified "supplies". Chissano said he could not understand why Cossa had passed the cheques on to Satar.
When Cossa first took the witness stand, on 9 December, she said that the deal reached concerned damaged vehicles from the South African company Budget-Rent-a-Car. in 1999. Budget had demanded 750,000 rands (75,000 dollars) from Expresso Tours and had threatened to take Nyimpine Chissano to court. Cossa lent Chissano enough money to save him from this fate.
In 2000, she claimed, a deal was reached whereby Satar would pay off Nyimpine's loan from Cossa. The security given by Expresso Tours to Satar was the series of postdated cheques - six for 165 million meticais each and one for 247.5 million.
Cossa said that Satar cashed the largest of these cheques before he should have done, and when Expresso Tours found that 247.5 million meticais had disappeared from its account, it demanded that Satar repay - which he did.
Expresso Tours then cancelled the whole arrangement, said Cossa, and tried to recover the postdated cheques, which Satar refused to hand over.
Last Monday, Cossa apparently changed this story. For if she did not change it, then she could simply have told the court on Friday that she stood by her December statements. Instead she declared "I don't want to explain this now, because I have made statements to the public prosecutor in the other case".
When pressed, she simply referred the court to her Monday interrogation, which is not in the public domain.
Nini Satar's lawyer, Eduardo Jorge, demanded that a copy of the minutes of the Monday interrogation be provided for the case file of the current trial. Prosecuting attorney Mourao Baluce opposed this, on the grounds that the second case was sub judice.
The Cardoso family's lawyer, Lucinda Cruz, suggested asking Cossa which parts of her December testimony she stood by, and which parts she now rejected.
This time, Paulino accepted the arguments of Jorge, and ordered that a photocopy be made of the Monday interrogation.
