Chapo appoints new head of security service

Maputo, 18 Jun (AIM) – Mozambican President Daniel Chapo on Tuesday appointed former Agriculture Minister, Jose Pacheco, as the new director-general of the State Security and Intelligence Service (SISE).

Pacheco’s background is in agriculture, and he has served as both Deputy Minister and full Minister of Agriculture. During a government career spanning decades, he has also served as Foreign Minister, Minister of the Interior and Governor of the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

He was governor of Cabo Delgado from 1998 to 2005, and his detailed knowledge of the province will certainly be an asset in his new post, since one of the major threats to Mozambican security is Islamist terrorism in the province.

The post of SISE General Director has been vacant since November 2004, when the previous director, Bernardo Lidimba, died in a traffic accident in Mapai district, in the southern province of Gaza.

Then prestige of SISE suffered severely because of its involvement in the scandal of the “hidden debts”. This was the creation of three fraudulent companies, Proindicus, Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company) and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), which, in 2013 and 2014, illicitly obtained loans of over two billion US dollars from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia.

Those loans were only possible because the government of the day, under the then President Armando Guebuza, guaranteed 100 per cent of the money. Guebuza’s finance minister, Manuel Chang, signed the loan guarantees, although they violated clauses in the 2013 and 2014 budget laws, which set ceilings on government loans. Chang is now in a New York prison after a US court last year found him guilty of wire fraud.

The fraudulent scheme was the brainchild of the Abu Dhabi based group, Privinvest, working in tandem with the SISE leadership. In a trial held in Maputo in 2021-2022, 11 people were sentenced to lengthy prison terms because of their role in the scandal, including the huge bribes they had accepted from Privinvest. Among those sentenced was the then Director-General of SISE, Gregorio Leao, and the SISE head of economic intelligence, Antonio Carlos do Rosario, who became chairperson of the board of all three fraudulent companies.

On Monday, Chapo also appointed three members of the advisory body, the Council of State, who are all well-known figures in the ruling Frelimo Party, and who have served previous terms on the Council.

They are former defence minister Alberto Chipande, former education minister and former first lady, Graca Machel, and longstanding Frelimo parliamentary deputy, Felizarda Paulino, who was first elected to parliament in 1977.

The Council of State meets infrequently, but, under the Constitution, it must meet to give its opinion on the date of general elections. It must also give its opinion on any declaration of war, of a state of siege or of emergency, or the dissolution of parliament. None of these events have ever happened in Mozambican history.

Chapo also appointed Mariano Matsinha and Joaquim Munhepe as members of the National Defence and Security Council (CNDS). Matsinha is a former security minister and former member of the Frelimo Political Commission, and Munhepe is a veteran of the war for Mozambican independence. For both men, this is their second term on the CNDS.

The task of the CNDS is to advise the President on matters concerning security and national sovereignty.
(AIM)
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