Airports Boss Ordered Work On Frelimo School

The building company Kaluminio, which rehabilitated the Central School of the ruling Frelimo Party in the southern Mozambican city of Matola, declared on Friday that the payment was made, not by Frelimo, but by the Mozambican Airports Company (ADM), on the initiative of its chairperson, Diodino Cambaza.

At the trial before the Maputo City Court of Cambaza and four others, accused of looting the equivalent of two million US dollars from ADM, a representative of Kaluminio, Calisto Muchanga, said it was Cambaza who approached him and asked the company to do the work.

Muchanga said he only met the director of the Frelimo school, Arlindo Chilundo, after the work had begun. He painted the entire deal as an initiative of Cambaza - and apparently did not bother to ask whether it was appropriate for the airports company to be paying for work that benefited a political party.

Muchanga said that the cost of the work was seven million meticais (256,400 US dollars, at current exchange rates). But the court heard earlier in the trial that the initial payment by ADM was only five million meticais.

Muchanga claimed that ADM still owes money to his company for this work - and that even after the arrest of Cambaza, ADM continued to pay off this illegitimate debt in instalments.

The current ADM board, under Manuel Veterano, is continuing to pay the debt, and about 650,000 meticais is still outstanding, said Muchanga. Illicit payments are thus continuing, despite the change in the ADM management.

A second witness heard on Friday, Jeremias Tchamo, financial director of Mozambique Airlines (LAM), said that one of Cambaza's co-accused, Deolinda Matos, had complained to him that ADM was using her for purposes she knew nothing about.

Matos was the general manager of the catering company SMS, which is 50 per cent owned by LAM and 50 per cent by ADM. The prosecution alleges that Cambaza used SMS as a conduit to syphon money out of ADM. Matos told the court last week that ADM money had indeed been transferred via SMS, and she went along with this because she felt she had to obey orders given by Cambaza.

Tchamo said that the scandal did not directly damage SMS, since the stolen money did not come from its coffers. Nonetheless, he felt that the company's image had been affected.

When the abuse of SMS came to light, an extraordinary meeting of the SMS shareholders was called, said Tchamo, which condemned the manipulation of the company. Asked what role LAM played in the SMS management, Tchamo said it did not intervene in day-to-day management, which was left up to SMS's own board of directors.

Like LAM chairperson Jose Viegas, Tchamo said he had known Matos for more than two decades and regarded her as an honest person. He thought it was thanks to her work that SMS "is today a catering company of international quality".

Source: allafrica (2009.11.27)