Mozambique’s ex-transport minister sentenced to 20 years in prison in corruption case

Ex-Mozambique minister sentenced to 20 years

MAPUTO, Mozambique — A court sentenced Mozambique’s former transport minister to 20 years in prison Saturday for his involvement in the theft of nearly $2 million in the country’s biggest corruption case to go to trial since independence in 1975.

Former Transport Minister Antonio Munguambe was convicted of stealing money from the publicly owned company that runs the airports in this southeast African nation. He was fired in 2008 following riots in Mozambique’s capital over the high price of fuel.

Munguambe had “set a bad example for society,” Judge Dimas Marroa said as the sentences were read live on state television, adding there was evidence that Munguambe knew the money was being looted from the company. The judge said he was imposing long prison sentences to deter people from stealing state funds.

The former chairperson of Mozambique Airports Company (ADM), Diodino Cambaza, was sentenced to 22 years after he was accused of being the ringleader in the corruption scandal at the company. Antenor Pereira, ADM’s former financial director, now faces 20 years in jail.

Two other defendants were sentenced to about two years each in connection with the case. The defendants now have five days to appeal the verdict and sentences.

The judge also ruled Saturday that the defendants must repay all the money that was drained from the Mozambique Airports Company between 2005 and October 2008.

Marroa said the ADM board had illicitly altered the privileges enjoyed by board members, and gave them the right to buy ADM houses at a mere 60 percent of their value. Such a change should have been approved by the transport minister, but the new set of privileges was never sent to the ministry, Marroa said.

The court also ruled that the former transport minister had abused his position by asking the airport company for money to pay for his children’s school fees in neighboring South Africa.

The judge said that Munguambe was well aware that his children had no right to scholarships paid for by ADM. Marroa said that Munguambe had abused his authority by making such a request to a company that his ministry supervised.

After winning independence from Portugal in 1975, Mozambique fell into a devastating war between Frelimo, which was then a Marxist guerrilla group, and Renamo, which was backed by neighboring South Africa’s apartheid government.

Since a U.N.-brokered peace accord ended the war, Mozambique has been admired for its political stability, economic recovery and post-conflict reconstruction.

Still, Mozambique ranks among the 50 most corrupt countries in the world, according to the watchdog Transparency International. The country passed an anti-corruption law in 2004. President Armando Guebuza, who first came to power in 2005 and won re-election last year, has promised to root out graft.

Saturday’s sentencings were applauded by Jose Mohamed, 39, as he rode a bus in the capital.

“Now these people will be afraid of putting their hands on state funds,” Mohamed said. “I have been waiting for 21 years now and I’m still poor.”