Mozambique’s Constitutional Council, the country’s highest body in matters of constitutional and electoral law, has decided to institute disciplinary proceedings against its former chairperson, Luis Mondlane, and to submit evidence of criminal behaviour by Mondlane to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. These decisions followed a report from the Commission of Inquiry which found compelling evidence for all the main accusations in the press concerning Mondlane’s illicit use of Council funds to cover his personal expenses.The Commission consisted of three of the six other judges on the Council – Lucia Ribeiro, Manuel Franque and Norberto Carrilho. It submitted its report to the Council plenary on Wednesday.The most serious accusation is that Mondlane used Council money to pay for his mortgage on a luxury house in central Maputo. The mortgage contract had been signed in 2009 between Mondlane and the country’s second largest bank, the BCI. The house cost 24.3 million meticais (900,000 US dollars at the time, but only 784,000 dollars now, due to exchange rate fluctuations).Mondlane was to pay the mortgage off in 180 monthly installments over 15 years. Including the interest, the payments were slightly more than 295,700 meticais a month. But Mondlane agreed with the bank that only 71,721 meticais a month would be taken from his personal account at the BCI. The other 224,000 meticais a month would be paid by the Constitutional Council as rent for a house that was not even registered in the Council’s name.This rent agreement was signed by the BCI and by the then Council general secretary, Geraldo Saranga, acting on Mondlane’s instructions. The rent contract was flagrantly irregular, since it did not even specify the address of the house being rented. Nonetheless, throughout 2010 the Council paid the “rent” – which in reality was not rent at all, but the greater part of Mondlane’s monthly mortgage payments.The money, the Commission of Inquiry concluded, was used to pay the service on Mondlane’s debt to the BCI “arising from a mortgage contract which he and his wife had signed in their personal capacities”. Mondlane could not even pay from his own funds the agreed 71,721 meticais a month, and fell into arrears with the BCI. By November 2010, the arrears had reached 3.6 million meticais. So Mondlane and his wife, Claudina Macuacua, wrote to Finance Minister Manuel Chang, asking the state to take over the mortgage, a plea that was rejected.The Commission of Inquiry also found that Mondlane had indeed used Council funds to purchase furnishings for the house, and a vast range of other personal goods and services, costing about 8.8 million meticais. The purchases violated the rules for the procurement of goods and services by state bodies such as the Constitutional Council. Instead of opening tenders for the goods required, Mondlane or his wife personally visited shops, ordered the goods or services they wanted, and presented the invoices to the Administration and Finance Department (DAF) of the Constitutional Council.
Both Saranga, and the head of the DAF, Carlos Magaia, repeatedly told Mondlane that he should obey the norms laid down for purchases by state bodies, and he repeatedly ignored this advice.Furthermore, the goods were never shown to the DAF so that it could check that what was on the invoice was what was really delivered. Instead the goods were taken straight to Mondlane’s house. In one case, for furniture costing two million meticais, Mondlane ordered the DAF to pay this sum without even presenting an invoice. And when an invoice from the shop did show up, it contained no list of the items that this large sum had purchased. Such a list was only provided, at the insistence of the Council, in an e-mail from the supplier sent on Tuesday this week.1.5 million meticais was spent on importing furniture from South Africa – although the Council’s budget has no line for importing furniture, and the rules governing state imports were not followed.The Commission of Inquiry thus proposed disciplinary proceedings against Mondlane, and the dispatch of its report to the Public Prosecutor’s office for criminal proceedings. Furthermore, it proposed that Mondlane should be notified to hand over all the goods he had purchased with Council funds. The plenary of the Council, meeting on Wednesday, accepted all these proposals and appointed Council member Joao Guenha to chair the disciplinary hearings.Even before receiving the report from the Commission of Inquiry, Attorney-General Augusto Paulino ordered a forensic audit of the accounts of the Constitutional Council. This decision by Paulino, based on the press reports of the irregularities committed by Mondlane, seems to have been taken quite independently of the Council’s own inquiry.Mondlane is already facing criminal proceedings for his attempts to use the position of chairperson of the Council several days after he had resigned from this office, which constitutes the crime of impersonation.
Both Saranga, and the head of the DAF, Carlos Magaia, repeatedly told Mondlane that he should obey the norms laid down for purchases by state bodies, and he repeatedly ignored this advice.Furthermore, the goods were never shown to the DAF so that it could check that what was on the invoice was what was really delivered. Instead the goods were taken straight to Mondlane’s house. In one case, for furniture costing two million meticais, Mondlane ordered the DAF to pay this sum without even presenting an invoice. And when an invoice from the shop did show up, it contained no list of the items that this large sum had purchased. Such a list was only provided, at the insistence of the Council, in an e-mail from the supplier sent on Tuesday this week.1.5 million meticais was spent on importing furniture from South Africa – although the Council’s budget has no line for importing furniture, and the rules governing state imports were not followed.The Commission of Inquiry thus proposed disciplinary proceedings against Mondlane, and the dispatch of its report to the Public Prosecutor’s office for criminal proceedings. Furthermore, it proposed that Mondlane should be notified to hand over all the goods he had purchased with Council funds. The plenary of the Council, meeting on Wednesday, accepted all these proposals and appointed Council member Joao Guenha to chair the disciplinary hearings.Even before receiving the report from the Commission of Inquiry, Attorney-General Augusto Paulino ordered a forensic audit of the accounts of the Constitutional Council. This decision by Paulino, based on the press reports of the irregularities committed by Mondlane, seems to have been taken quite independently of the Council’s own inquiry.Mondlane is already facing criminal proceedings for his attempts to use the position of chairperson of the Council several days after he had resigned from this office, which constitutes the crime of impersonation.
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