The former president of the Republic of Mozambique, Armando Emílio Guebuza, assumed today, before the Judicial Court of the City of Maputo, that he ordered the contraction of the debt that damaged the Mozambican State in more than 2.2 billion dollars, with the company Privinvest.

Answering one of the questions from the Public Ministry, represented at the trial by Sheila Marrengula, Armando Guebuza, the last declarant to be heard by the Court, also said that all the implementation of the process was triggered by the Operational Command, "which had its chief", the current President of the Republic, Filipe Jacinto Nyusi.

"The decision to seek resources [that would come to indebt the Mozambican state] was taken by me, delegating the operative command through its leaders," said Armando Guebuza, who, throughout the hearing, demonstrated that he could not recall several other details. "A lot of time passes."

However, Guebuza stressed to the judge of the case, Efigénio Baptista, that although the order for the creation of the companies Mozambique Asset Management (MAM), Empresa Moçambicana de Atum (Ematum) and Proindicus was issued by him, as President of the country, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces and Defense of Mozambique, he does not know the details and contours of the financing for the implementation of the project to protect the Special Economic Zone (SEZ). The former president does not remember the date on which the creation of the SEZ was proposed to him.

"The physical part, the economic part was proposed by the Operational Command" composed of several members, including the Minister of Defense (now President of the Republic), the Minister of the Interior (Alberto Mondlane), and the Director General of the State Information and Security Service, SISE (Gregório Leão).

Guebuza also said that he delegated the Operational Command to create the solution to protect the sovereignty of the Mozambican state due to threats that could compromise the integrity of the territory.

"There were many immigrants along the borders in the north of the country entering Mozambique illegally and in large numbers; there were drug traffickers in that part of the country, as well as the arrival of drugs by sea through the coast. At the same time we had situations of pirate attacks, so much so that even pirates came from the north to near Inhambane. Simultaneously, we had attacks from Renamo in the northern and central part, who attacked some of our barracks and killed, murdered our soldiers. In other words, there were threats that questioned the sovereignty of the Mozambicans over their own territory," Armando Guebuza said.

Thus, the best way to protect the sovereignty of the Mozambican state was to assess the needs of the state itself and seek to make up for the deficits.

"Through the Defense and Security Forces it was studied and concluded that beyond the usual activities of homeland defense with the resources that we had at the time, we needed to take into account the situation at sea and on land borders, in the north and a little bit in the west. This is what explains the reason for the creation of the Integrated Monitoring and Protection System program" that came to justify the need for the creation of MAM, Ematum, and Proindicus.