The Cabo Delgado Provincial Court in northern Mozambique on Wednesday began hearing the case against 11 senior civil servants, accused of defrauding the state of more than five million meticais (about 142,000 US dollars, at current exchange rates) in 2006.The most senior of the accused is Angelina Alidaboka, a finance official in 2006, but now the permanent secretary of the Mecufi district administration. The other accused are officials in the provincial planning and finance directorates, and in the Cabo Delgado health services.Originally there was a 12th accused, Antonio Mandundo, who was deputy provincial director of planning and finance when the thefts occurred. But he cannot stand trial because he died earlier this year.All 11 suspects are accused of withdrawing state funds for their own benefit, resorting to over-invoicing, falsification of documents, and even crude erasures on invoices. Even with the erasures the invoices were accepted in the finance department of the provincial health directorate.One of the accused, health official Anabela Alfredo, downplayed the erasures. She said she only recognised one erasure, and it was an attempt to correct the date of the invoice.The trial did not get off to a good start, since only six of the 11 accused showed up at the courtroom in the provincial capital, Pemba.The presiding judge of the Provincial Court, Joao Ribeiro, told the independent daily “O Pais” that the provincial director of finance, Paulo Risco, and five other Cabo Delgado finance officials are facing charges concerned with a separate and much larger fraud, involving the theft of 50 million meticais in 2009. Ribeiro expected this case to come to trial in the near future.
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