Just as the information about the return to the Mozambican state of the seven million dollars disbursed by Privinvest to bribe Manuel Chang, the former Minister of Finance, was not in the public domain, information was concealed that, in fact, this amount was not returned by Manuel Chang, as the Deputy Attorney General and the Governor of the Bank of Mozambique recently revealed.

Manuel Chang is on trial in New York, in the United States of America, and two Mozambican journalists (the only ones from the national press) are accompanying him, namely Borges Nhamire, also a researcher at the Center for Public Integrity (CIP), and Fernando Lima, from the portal Zitamar.

According to Borges Nhamire, who was speaking this Wednesday (07) in a video chat with the Director General of CIP, Edson CortêsThere is a lot of information that most people in Mozambique don't know about. Among the many - and as a CIP document attests - is the fact that the amount of bribes to Manuel Chang was returned to the Mozambican state, through a deposit in a Ministry of Finance account domiciled at the Central Bank, in November 2019. This was done by Luís Filipe Pereira Rocha Brito, a businessman in the car sector in Mozambique, who supplied Ford vehicles to state institutions.

How was the scheme devised?

Of the seven million dollars in bribes, two million were paid by transfer to a company called Genoa Asset, SA, and five million transferred to the accounts of another company called Thyse International. American correspondent banks in New York were used for the payments. The CIP document states that Luís Brito is accused of having received part of the bribes.

Citing the trial transcripts, the CIP researcher said that "it was interesting to see that Chang's money was paid to a company, the InterAuto, which sells Ford cars, in Maputo".

He also pointed out that this was the company that supplied the majority of Ford vehicles to the state during Armando Guebuza's rule.

"Now Mahindras have started to come in. But under the Guebuza government, almost all civil servants used Ford Ranger cars at the time," he recalled.

According to Borges Nhamire, InterAuto is the company that received almost all of the bribe money, seven million dollars, for Manuel Chang. "[It was Mr. Luís Brito] who received the seven million from Privinvest, and on November 29, 2019, [he] returned seven million to the Bank of Mozambique. It is this money that Chang is said to have returned," he said.

Borges criticized the fact that, a few weeks ago, the Deputy Attorney General, Ângelo Vasco Matusse, confirmed that Manuel Chang had returned the money, after being questioned about the veracity of the information. To the question "is it true that Chang's money was returned?", prosecutor Matusse replied "yes, I confirm". "What is revealed here in New York is that it was a businessman or owner of InterAuto who returned the money."

Remember, recently, Rogério Zandamela, in front of journalists, answered, and tried to specify dates, the question of whether it was true that Manuel Chang had returned the bribe money.

The journalist believes that Mozambicans have been misled or concealed information for five years, due to the fact that the government, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Bank of Mozambique (with the exception of bank secrecy) have not provided the information.

"The Americans have all this data. They even show the number of the bank account to which the money was returned, the companies through which Mr. Luís Brito received the money from Privinvest. And the defense denies that this money is Chang's," he said.

According to Borges, in the corridors of the court where Manuel Chang's trial is taking place, there is information that Luís Brito is being investigated by the American authorities for his involvement in the seven million dollar bribe. (Image: DR)