Maputo, 3 Sep (AIM) – The Mozambican authorities on Monday detained Alexandre Chivale, the lawyer for the family of former President Armando Guebuza.
According to a report in the independent newsheet “Carta de Mocambique”, Chivale was detained in the southern city of Matola at the Maputo Provincial Immigration Directorate where he had gone to renew his passport.
The immigration directorate was acting on the basis of an arrest warrant issued in January 2022 by Judge Efigenio Baptista, of the Maputo city law court, during the trial of 19 people in connection with the worst financial scandal in Mozambican history, known as the case of the “hidden debts”.
This concerned illicit loans of over two billion US dollars which three fraudulent, security-related companies, Proindicus, Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), obtained from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia, on the basis of sovereign guarantees issued by Guebuza’s government. The guarantees were signed by the then finance minister, Manuel Chang, whom a New York court last month found guilty of fraud and money laundering.
Chivale represented two of the main defendants in the Maputo trial – Guebuza’s oldest son, Ndambi Guebuza, who allegedly took bribes of 33 million dollars from the Abu Dhabi-based group, Privinvest, and Antonio Carlos d Rosario, who was head of economic intelligence in the security service, SISE, and chairperson of all three of the fraudulent companies.
In the early stages of the trial, Chivale clashed repeatedly with Baptista, and was regarded as undermining the authority of the judge.
The confrontation came to a head on 19 October 2021 when Baptista ordered Chivale to abandon the case because of a serious conflict of interests. The chief prosecutor, Ana Sheila Marrengula, had pointed out that Chivale was a director of the company Txopela Investments, which was effectively run by Rosario, and had close ties with Privinvest.
She argued that Txopela was one of the channels through which the bribes paid by Privinvest were channeled. Privinvest money was used, via Txopela, to buy a number of buildings, including the flat where Chivale was living.
Baptista agreed with Marrengula that it was intolerable to allow Txopela to carry on administering properties obtained through Privinvest bribes, and with clear evidence of money laundering.
Chivale had to hand over the keys to all the Txopela properties. Baptista also ordered that, because of this conflict of interest, Chivale could no longer act as a defence lawyer in the case.
But his presence was required as a witness to testify about the activities of Txopela –and at this point, Chivale disappeared. Baptista regarded him as a fugitive and in January 2022 issued a warrant for his arrest.
Chivale did not go into hiding, but until now there was little sign of attempts being made to being him to justice.
Chivale was not detained for very long on Monday. That afternoon, after some hours of questioning, he was released, apparently due to a contradiction between the dispatches of the court and the attorneys office.
(AIM)
Pf/ (505)
