Mozambique: Drugs and the U.S. Charge D'affaires

Paul Fauvet

"The value of illegal drugs passing through Mozambique is probably more than all legal foreign trade combined, according to international experts. . . (who) estimate that more than one tonne per month of cocaine and heroin are now passing through Mozambique".

Anyone reading that quote today probably assumes that it comes from the Maputo US embassy telegrams, signed by former US charge d'affairs Todd Chapman, and released last week by the whistle-blowing organisation Wikileaks.

But AIM did not need to go to Wikileaks for that quote - it comes from an article by British journalist and researcher Joe Hanlon published in the Mozambican press in 2001, years before Todd Chapman set foot in Mozambique. (The Portuguese version appeared in the independent newsheet "Metical" on 28 June 2001, and AIM published an English summary.)

Chapman stumbled across this article, when it was republished in May 2009 - and, in yet another indication of how embassies have no institutional memory, assumed it was brand new.

So a telegram sent by Chapman to Washington on 1 July 2009 cites Hanlon's article as new evidence for narco-trafficking in Mozambique. Indeed several of Chapman's claims seem to be plagiarized from Hanlon, in blissful ignorance that he was ripping off an article that was eight years old.

Hanlon's article wondered whether the Maputo property boom was fuelled by drug money, noted an expansion in foreign currency bureaus apparently unjustified by the size of the Mozambican economy, and pointed to the way illicitly acquired money could be laundered through the stock exchange.

All these concerns crop up in Chapman's telegram, though he only mentions Hanlon's name in connection with the stock exchange - he attributes the other concerns to conveniently anonymous sources who may or may not exist.

This cable and two succeeding ones concentrate on drug-trafficking - but reveal very little that could not have been gleaned, and in considerably greater detail, from the Mozambican press.

Among those whom Chapman names as drug traffickers is Nampula businessman Gulamo Rassul, a name very familiar to journalists who have followed drug scandals since he mid-1990s.

The independent newsheet "Mediafax", edited at the time by the country's best investigative journalist, the late Carlos Cardoso, discovered in 1995 that, two years earlier, a man named as Carlos Alberto da Silva, made four exports that were described as tea, but were found to be the drug hashish. Carlos Silva turned out to be working on behalf of Gulamo Rassul.

When police moved in on the hashish racket, Rassul fled the country, but returned a couple of months later. He was briefly detained, then released on bail, and little more was heard about the hashish disguised as tea.

But in August 1997, 12 tonnes of hashish was found at a hideout in Quissanga on the coast of the northern province of Cabo Delgado. Once again Rassul was arrested - and once again he was released, although this time after a trial. In an extraordinary decision, the judge sentenced Humberto da Graca, the chauffeur employed by Rassul, who had driven trucks laden with hashish between Quissanga an the port of Nacala, to 12 years imprisonment, while allowing Rassul himself to walk free. But the evidence given to the court showed that Graca was not freelancing, but working for Rassul.

Chapman also names as traffickers the Ayoob family. Macsud Ayoob shot to prominence in the Mozambican press in 2002, when customs stopped him at Maputo airport and found that he was carrying over a million dollars in banknotes in his baggage. An investigation by journalist Luis Nhachote in 2008 found that both Macssod and his brother Momed Khalid Ayoob had been arrested in Portugal on different occasions and charged with drug trafficking.

Chapman's cables also claim that one of the richest men in Mozambique, Mohamed Bachir Sulemane, owner of the MBS business empire, has made his money out of drugs. Some of the press have leapt to the conclusion that Chapman's cables precipitated the decision by US President Barack Obama in June to name Bachir as a drugs baron. In reality, the US government has more than one source of information, and Bachir had been under suspicion for some years (though he has never been caught doing anything as foolish as taking a suitcase full of dollar bills to Dubai).

In addition to retelling the stories that journalists already know, Chapman made some inventive claims of his own, which include mistakes showing how rudimentary his knowledge of Mozambique is. Thus he claimed that "Nazir Lunat, a FRELIMO parliamentarian and influential imam in Maputo, recently resigned from his position in the National Assembly because of concerns over the law allowing casino liberalizations".

This law was promulgated by Guebuza in January 2010. Lunat served in the Assembly from 1995 to 1999, and, far from resigning, he did not stand for re-election. Conclusion: the US embassy in Maputo does not even possess a list of members of the Mozambican parliament.

Chapman notes that Nacala has been used for drug shipments, and so finds it very sinister that the main shareholder in the Northern Development Corridor (CDN) is now Insitec, described as "a Guebuza front company".

But Insitec only took over in late 2008. Chapman omits to tell the State Department who was running CDN previously - for until they sold their shares to Insitec, the main shareholders were two US companies, the Railroad Development Corporation (RDC) and Edlows Resources. So the people in charge of running a port which Chapman believes is a major narcotics entrepot were, until recently, two American corporations.

Chapman also claims that "the primary route for cocaine is by air to Maputo from Brazil via Johannesburg, Lisbon or Luanda. On arrival passengers and baggage do not pass through immigration and customs, which allows them to avoid the improved security at the airports of origin".

He is simply wrong: as I know from personal experience, passengers and baggage from Johannesburg and Lisbon most certainly do pass through Maputo immigration and customs. Nowadays, rather than customs officials rummaging by hand through suitcases, all bags pass through a scanner.

It also makes no sense to claim that weak security at the airport of arrival (Maputo) would allow passengers to evade stronger security at the airport of departure. Chapman's claim amounts to saying that what happens in Maputo can influence what has already happened, ten or 20 hours earlier, in Lisbon or Rio de Janeiro. Perhaps he believes in time travel.

There is much more that is remarkable about these cables - such as Chapman's credulous acceptance of a bit of gossip received anonymously and at second hand that the Director-General of Customs, Domingos Tivane, has solid gold fittings in his bathroom. Or Chapman's claim that Guebuza is the main shareholder in Insitec - a glance at the list of Insitec shareholders published in the official gazette, the "Boletim da Republica" shows that Guebuza is not among them.

But perhaps the best short summary of Chapman's messages came from Joe Hanlon last week, commenting "One thing that Wikileaks shows is how embassy cables are a jumble of accurate information, wrong statements and ill-informed opinion".

Source: allafrica - 2010.12.13