The Privinvest Group and its (now deceased) leader Iskandar Safa were ordered by the London Court to pay 1.9 billion US dollars to Mozambique in the Hidden Debts case. Read more...

Reacting to the London court's ruling, Borges Nhamire, a researcher at the Center for Public Integrity (CIP), clarified that the money, if it is reimbursed, will not fall into the coffers of the Mozambican state, since Mozambique took over the payment of Ematum's debts as sovereign debt, a significant part of which has already been paid off and currently has an estimated balance of 900 million dollars.

"It partially took over MAM's guarantees, which is why it paid the money committed to Privinvest BCP. It also took over part of Proindicus' debt, which is why it reached an agreement with the creditors," he said.

According to the researcher, who was speaking on a debate program on the STVThis Monday, this amount will only block the outflow of funds earmarked for investments and various sectors to pay off the debts of these companies.

"It's not money that goes into the coffers of the Mozambican state for [the provision of public goods]. All that money is going to evaporate, if it hasn't already, to pay for the expenses that Mozambique has already started paying. This money will prevent other money that would have gone to education, infrastructure and other essential public services from leaving the state coffers to pay off a loan that didn't benefit the Mozambican state," he said.

In the analyst's view, the merit of the London court ruling is that it prevents Mozambicans and their future generations from continuing to pay the Hidden Debts.

He said that the decision of the judge who was dealing with the case supported the previous conclusions on the Hidden Debts, namely the Kroll report, the indictment of the US Department of Justice "repeating the same things", and the indictment and trial of the Mozambican state, "repeating the same things".

"It's not possible for four different entities, from four different countries, to come to the same conclusion that a group of corrupt bankers teamed up with a group of corrupt government officials and a corrupt private company to squander the resources of a poor state," he said, stressing that, in essence, "the sentence is nothing new, if it doesn't add another stone to the edifice of the truth about corruption, which was the hidden debts."