Mozambique has spent at least five million pounds (5.8 million euros) preparing documents for the hidden debts lawsuit in British courts, it was revealed this Tuesday at the Commercial Court in London.

The amount was advanced by the law firm Peters & Peters, which said it had sent staff and equipment to Maputo to organize the documents needed for the trial in the UK, which is scheduled to begin in October 2023.

"The Republic has already spent around five million pounds to meet the disclosure obligations [disclosure]. Given that the Republic is the third poorest nation in the world, this represents a huge sum," admitted Sarah Gabriel, a partner and lawyer specializing in commercial litigation, in a statement presented last week and quoted by Correio da Manhã.

The disclosure o and sharing of documentary evidence is mandatory and an essential step in UK proceedings, as this is when the different parties make documents relevant to the proceedings available to each other so that each can prepare their respective cases.

At a preliminary hearing this Tuesday, the lawyer representing Mozambique in the legal proceedings initiated by the Attorney General's Office (PGR), Jonathan Adkin, reiterated the difficulty revealed in April in meeting the end-September deadline and the request for it to be extended to December 23 due to the "size and challenges of the task."

In the face of objections from other parties in the case, namely the bank Credit Suisse and the shipping group Privinvest, Judge Robin Knowles refused and adopted a compromise solution, allowing an extension of the deadline for disclosure of documentary evidence until the end of November.

However, it kept October 2023 as the beginning of the trial, as well as the dates of the other stages of the proceedings, namely the delivery of witness and expert statements by the end of February and end of May 2023, respectively.

As a condition of this extension, it defined that the parties must make rolling disclosure of documents as they become available, facilitating the work of others involved, and threatened "sanctions and consequences" for any failure to meet the deadline.

With Russian bank VTB again absent due to the sanctions it is subject to because of the war in Ukraine, Credit Suisse has expressed concerns about how the choice of documents that are to be disclosed is being made.

Attorney Andrew Hunter questioned the exclusion of British lawyers in the process of selecting documents for disclosure.

"What is apparent is that [the lawyers] at Peters & Peters have not been allowed to play their role, they are doing so only on a supervisory condition," he said.

Privinvest referred to the fact that the PGR's own British lawyers are encountering resistance within the Government of Mozambique in accessing documentation and equipment, which is subject to "hierarchical" authorizations.

Prinvinvest's lawyer, Duncan Matthews, also raised the issue that communications by members of the Mozambican government and institutions were made through private devices and email addresses, the contents of which are not expected to be made available.

Mozambique, he said, should "allow British lawyers to verify the integrity of the disclosure process" and have access to electronic equipment, including private ones, of the departments and persons concerned.

A new preliminary hearing to discuss issues such as the state secrecy with which some documents may be classified is scheduled for July 29.

Initiated by the PGR on behalf of the Republic of Mozambique in 2019, the lawsuit in the British courts aims to try to cancel the $622 million debt of the state-owned company ProIndicus to the Credit Suisse bank and obtain compensation to cover all losses resulting from the "hidden debts" scandal.

In Mozambique there are 19 defendants accused by the Public Prosecutor's Office of having associated in a "gang" and robbed the Mozambican State of $2.7 billion (2.3 billion euros) raised from international banks through guarantees provided by the Government.

The hidden debts were incurred between 2013 and 2014 by the Mozambican state-owned companies Proindicus, Ematum and MAM for tuna fishing and maritime protection projects.

The financing was intended for the purchase of tuna fishing boats and for equipment and maritime security services provided by Privinvest companies.

The loans were secretly guaranteed by the government of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo), led by Armando Guebuza, without the knowledge of the parliament or the Administrative Court.