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PORTUGUESE CITIZEN JAILED FOR CORRUPTION
(04/07/2008)
Maputo, 3 Jul (AIM) – A Mozambican court has finally judged a case of corruption – however the man convicted is not a Mozambican official, but a Portuguese citizen accusing of offering a bribe to Interior Ministry officials in order to speed up his request for Mozambican nationality.
On Thursday, the third section of the Maputo City Court sentenced Olinto Jose Mota e Silva to a year's imprisonment for offering the bribe. However, he will not have to spend any time in prison at all, since the punishment can be converted into a fine at the rate of 30 meticais a day. This comes to 10,950 meticais (about 450 US dollars).
Mota e Silva has been living in Mozambique since 1982, and is a well paid official at the Standard Bank (according to an Interior Ministry source, he was earning 15,000 dollars a month). In 2004, he applied for Mozambican nationality, as was his right, having lived in the country for more than the statutory ten years.
Two years later, when he had still received no reply, he went to the Interior Ministry to find out what had happened to his request. Ilidio Miguel, director of the office of Interior Minister Jose Pacheco, told another official, Amorim Bila, to deal with the case.
The prosecution alleged that Mota e Silva then offered a bribe of 1,500 dollars to speed things up. The Ministry officials tried to produce incriminating evidence by taping phone calls with Mota e Silva, and a conversation between themselves and the Portuguese. They also wanted to film this conversation, but somehow the cameras failed.
The judge ruled that this evidence was inadmissible – but only because the defendant had not consented to the taping. This argument is absurd – obviously people intent on committing crimes are not going to consent to having their words recorded. In the case of telephone conversations, the police can only use wire taps with a court authorization, but that was not the argument the judge used to rule the Ministry tactics illegal.
The judge did, however, accept the one piece of hard evidence – the 1,100 US dollars and 800 South African rands that Mota e Silva had supposedly given to the Ministry officials. That sum has now been deposited in the account of the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption (GCCC), a body that operates out of the Attorney-General's Office.
It is difficult for journalists to judge the evidence, since the trial took place without any publicity. Nobody in the media knew that a corruption case was being heard until on Thursday the Interior Ministry contacted newsrooms to invite reporters to hear the verdict and sentence.
But when journalists turned up court officials attempted, quite illegally, to prevent them from listening to the judge reading out his sentence. Journalists demanded to know on what legal basis they were being asked to leave. An arrogant official snapped "We're not here to discuss what the law says. I'm transmitting the orders of the judge".
The journalists decided they were not going to be pushed around and decided to stay. Nonetheless the same official ordered police to remove the cameraman of Mozambican Television (TVM). He had obviously misunderstood the law that bans cameras and microphones from courtrooms – that ban covers the questioning of defendants and witnesses, but not the formal opening and closing of trials. This was made very clear by the Constitutional Council when it gave its ruling on whether keeping the cameras out would violate the constitutionally enshrined right to information.
The police successfully threw the cameraman out – and then even told the remaining journalists that they could not take notes. However, the half dozen journalists present simply ignored this illegal order.
To add to the atmosphere of secrecy, the court officials refused even to tell reporters the name of the judge.
Mota e Silva's lawyer has appealed against the verdict and sentence.
(AIM)
Mm/pf (643)
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CIP Newsletter 6 EITI Eng
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