TRIAL OF FORMER INTERIOR MINISTER BEGINS

The Maputo City Court on Tuesday began hearing the case against former Interior Minister Almerino Manhenje, accused of committing budgetary irregularities and abusing his position, much less serious charges than that of diverting state funds which prosecutors initially put on the charge sheet.The case has already undergone some sharp twists and turns. Initially Manhenje faced 49 charges – but the investigating magistrate threw out 48 of them. The prosecution appealed to the Supreme Court, which reinstated some of the charges, and reorganized the charge sheet.As a result, Manhenje now faces six charges - three charges of violating budgetary, two of covering up the payment of undue remunerations and one of abusing his position.But the Supreme Court rejected the charge of diverting state funds (which could have carried a sentence of 20 years imprisonment) on the grounds that Ministers do not normally have funds from the state budget under their direct control.Ministers could not therefore physically steal the money. They could, however, be the “moral authors” of such thefts, if they conspired with others for the diversion of the funds. For that to stick, the prosecution needed to prove that Manhenje had acted in concert with others to divert the funds.The Supreme Court found that the prosecution had not presented evidence of such a conspiracy, and so this accusation was eliminated from the charge sheet.The “violations of budgetary legality”, of which Manhenje is charged, concern the payment of fixed and mobile telephone costs for senior Interior Ministry officials, although these costs were not covered by the Ministry’s budget. Manhenje is also accused of paying with Ministry funds for his wife’s phone bill. This sum was 8,226 meticais (234 US dollars at current exchange rate, but considerably more at the time).The charge of abuse of his position refers to the granting of two warehouses belonging to the Interior Ministry to the company Inupol, which was supposed to produce police uniforms. Manhenje, the prosecution argues, did not have the power or authorisation to make this deal.The charges of covering up for “undue remunerations” refers to the allegation that Manhenje had benefited illegally from foodstuffs to the value of over 551,000 meticais acquired with Interior Ministry funds by his two co-accused, Carlos Fidelis and Alvaro Nunes de Carvalho, who were the financial director and deputy director of the Ministry.He had also allegedly accepted that air tickets for his wife and daughter were paid out of Ministry funds, with no legal basis for such generosity.Fidelis and Carvalho also face charges of paying “undue remunerations” – in their cases this refers to paying fictitious wages to 55 people, some of whom had already died. The list also included the names of people who had been expelled or transferred from the ministry, and some who seemed not to exist at all. Nonetheless, the wages were regularly paid.On Tuesday, the session was entirely occupied by the judge, Octavio Tchuma, reading the documents – the charge sheet, the dispatch eliminating most of the charges, the prosecution’s appeal, and the ruling from the Supreme Court. The documents took seven hours to read.Manhenje is scheduled to give evidence on Wednesday