"Secret of the Gods", the former Minister of Finance, Manuel Chang, has returned seven million dollars he received in bribes from the Privinvest Group to make Ematum MAM and ProIndicus projects viable some time ago, according to the Governor of the Bank of Mozambique. The money is in the institution.

Rogério Zandamela said on Wednesday (31) that the amount of bribes in the Hidden Debt scandal has been in the Central Bank's coffers for over a year, and is therefore not a new issue for the institution. It is therefore understandable that the BM has kept this information hidden from the Mozambican population. In fact, civil society has long criticized the fact that national institutions adopt strange methodologies for communicating essential data to Mozambicans. In this specific case, the Mozambican population only found out about the return of seven million dollars when the London ruling was announced.

"[The money] is with us, it's not in the commercial banks. It's been there for a long time. We're talking about it now. But it's with us. It's deposited in the Bank. It's not in commercial banking, it's deposited in the Bank of Mozambique," he revealed, stressing that it was before the covid-19 pandemic. ""

The Governor explained that the information had not been revealed beforehand because there was no authorization to do so, which could constitute a case of illegality.

"Right now they've revealed it, so right now I can confirm it. Yes, it's true," he said, noting that it's not the bank's role to provide this kind of information. "The bank secrecy law doesn't allow me to".

In this sense, Chang may have returned the money while already in prison. He was arrested in South Africa on his way to Dubai, where he was going on vacation in 2018. In July 2023, he was extradited to the United States, where he is already on trial.

The Governor, who was speaking at a press conference to announce the decisions of the Monetary Policy Committee, declined to comment on other sums recovered by the state from other defendants in the Hidden Debts case.

On the other hand, the head of the Central Bank believes that it is time for the country to rejoice at the London Court's decision to order Privinvest to pay more than 1.9 billion dollars in interest. But he also said that now we just have to wait for the money to be paid into the state coffers.

"It's a time for celebration. We want everything to go well. Nothing is easy. You don't develop a country with easy things. Let's celebrate in good faith that this money is coming into the country. We have to be proud of what we've achieved. We have to stop telling ourselves that good things happen because we're lucky and bad things happen because we're incompetent. Good things are also the result of effort, sacrifice and struggle," he said. (BM)