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FORMER INSS DIRECTOR FAILS TO CONVINCE
(26/06/2008)
Maputo, 24 Jun (AIM) The former general director of Mozambique's National Social Security Institute (INSS), Abilio Mussane, has denied responsibility for the massive thefts that allegedly occurred in the Institute, but has failed to answer any of the specific charges from the Labour Ministry team that audited the INSS. Three weeks ago, the head of that team, Paulino Muthombene, the National Director of Planning and Statistics in the Labour Ministry, told reporters that high ranking officials in the INSS had stolen the equivalent of eight million US dollars between 2002 and 2008.
For some reason, Mussane puts the amount stolen at ten million dollars, and denied that it had happened on his watch. He had been appointed general director only in 2005. But the Commission of Inquiry did not put all the blame on Muissanes shoulder, and quite specifically said that the thefts had taken place over a six year period. In a self-justifying press release, cited at length in the latest issue of the weekly paper O Pais, Mussane declared the time has come to say we ve had enough falsehoods, because a lie repeated several times takes on the appearance of truth.
"The spectacle of the disappearance of ten million dollars is a fiction", he declared. Citing the right to honour and good name, enshrined in the Mozambican constitution, Mussane said "in the light of this legal precept, I am telling the public that while I was managing the INSS, the ten million dollars mentioned in the report did not disappear. Such large sums could not have vanished without being noticed, he alleged. "Fraud of this nature touches the finances of the state, and its payment system cannot remain indifferent or intact faced with a rupture of this size", he said.
He claimed that the report libeled him, and threatened to sue the members of the Commission of Inquiry. "As soon as it becomes clear what really happened during the period of my management, I will be able to use legal means to restore my name and image which have been seriously damaged by this defamatory campaign". He floated the theory that no robbery had taken place, and the report was an excuse for others to steal ten million dollars from the INSS in the future and then blame it on him.
But he then admitted that there could easily have been "irregularities and mistakes", but some of these dated from the period prior to his appointment. Some of the contracts concerned had been signed under the previous management "and it was not the job of my team to annul those contracts". The conclusions reached by the Commission were "deceitful and tendentious", he claimed but at no point in his statement did Mussane refute any of them. It is worth looking at this in some detail. For the report which Muthombene presented to the press on 3 June, unlike most official inquiries, is full of damning figures.
Much of the fraud concerned the building of INSS delegations in the provinces. The Commission found that the contractor for the delegation in the western city of Tete, Dora Consultores, was paid before the contract had even been signed, and before it had received the necessary go ahead from the Administrative Tribunal, the body that oversees the legality of public expenditure.
That was in May 2004 (before Mussane was in charge). But over two years later (when Mussane was general director) Dora Consultores was paid again for the same job. The report noted that both sums referred to the same pro-forma invoice, with the same number and same date. Only the amount paid was different (the equivalents of 11,700 and 22,900 US dollars).
"Everything indicates that the same work was intentionally paid for twice, which constitutes an authentic fraud", remarked the report. Even worse, the second payment came just a fortnight after the INSS had paid another company, Arcus Consultores, 15,000 dollars for the same work. "Why two payments in the space of 13 days?", asked the report. "How many delegations were built in Tete?"
In Gaza province, the estimated cost of the project for the INSS delegation was 300,000 meticais (about 12,400 dollars). But the amount paid, once again to Dora Consultores, was over 1.9 million meticais in three instalments between 2002 and 2006. Other work on the Gaza delegation, awarded to the company Construcoes Chemane, was much more expensive. The initial budget was for 573,000 dollars, but it ended up costing almost twice that sum (1.14 million dollars). The excuse for this was that the work began late, and the contractor demanded an increase in the value of the contract, because the cost of building materials had increased.
Under such circumstances, where the money to be paid to a contractor spirals to over 50 per cent more than initially envisaged, a new tender should be held. This was not done. Labour Minister Helena Taipo had demanded that the INSS launch a tender to choose an independent inspector to monitor work on the Gaza delegation. Instead, this task was given to Dulcino Loforte, who was INSS Director of Assets, and is suspected of running the fraudulent operation.
When word of Loforte's suspicious activities reached Taipo, she ordered Mussane to suspend him. He refused, which led Taipo to issue a written warning, and no doubt this act of disobedience contributed to Mussane's dismissal this February. Loforte is also accused of interfering in the tender for building the INSS delegation in the northern province of Nampula. Although this tender was initially won by the Portuguese company Soares da Costa, the commission of Inquiry found that this result was cancelled and instead the contract was "illicitly awarded to A. Santos Construcoes".
Because severe erosion was threatening the INSS delegation in the southern city of Matola, it was decided to build a wall to protect it. The Matola Municipal Council offered to do the job for 1.3 million meticais. But the INSS rejected the offer and gave the work to the company Tecnil Construcoes, which charged 10.5 million. The work done was of such poor quality that it disintegrated in this year's rains. These are just some of the findings of the report. It becomes clear that the money was not stolen all at once, but in a constant trickle over several years, using a variety of fraudulent methods such as over-invoicing, paying twice for the same work, violating tender procedures, and attributing the job of inspecting building work to an interested party (Loforte).
Mussane replied to none of this. Yet "O Pais" not only gave his vacuous statements an entire page, but ran a lengthy article alongside them, denouncing "The other truths in the INSS management". This article is little more than an attack on Taipo for interfering in the running of the INSS. Of course, had Taipo not interfered, then the thefts would doubtless have continued.
(AIM)
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