Maputo — Mozambique’s former Labour Minister, Helena Taipo, on Tuesday denied all the charges against her in the case of 113 million meticais (about 1.8 million US dollars, at the current exchange rate) stolen from her Ministry in 2014-15.
Taipo is the most prominent of the 11 people accused of embezzlement and other financial offences relating to the scandal.
She admitted to the Maputo City Court that she had authorised a series of payments, intended for projects that would ensure the social reinsertion of Mozambican migrant workers returning from the South African mines.
But detailed information on how that money had been spent could only come from her Ministry’s Migrant Labour Directorate (DTM), she claimed.
Taipo argued that, as Minister, her job was to ensure implementation of government programmes. This included the annual Social and Economic Plans, drafted by the government and approved by the country’s parliament, the Assembly of the Republic. She said these plans included 12 projects for the social reinsertion of former miners and their dependents.
She agreed that she had authorized the projects, but claimed that implementation was in the hands of the DTM managers, notably the National Director of Migrant Labour, Anastacia Zitha (who is also among the accused).
“I can’t answer questions about operational matters”, Taipo said. “The DTM is better placed to explain this. I just approved the programmes that were in the plan”.
The withdrawal of 113 million meticais from DTM bank accounts was “in order to make the activities viable”, the former minister claimed.
Some of this money came from fees paid by companies for the hire of foreign labour and it should have been channelled to the National Treasury.
Taipo claimed that 68 million meticais had been channelled to the offices of the South African mine labour recruitment company, TEBA, in the southern Mozambican cities of Maxixe and Xai-Xai, to ensure payment of the deferred wages of the returning miners.
“I gave instructions to pay the miners’ wages, because it was a sensitive question and the miners were causing disturbances in these places”, she said. “But only the DTM can explain how this was done”.
Taipo said she knew nothing about the companies which had signed contracts with the DTM and how they were paid. Nonetheless, she admitted that she had instructed the DTM to complete construction of a block of workshops in Malema, in the northern province of Nampula, which had been started by the National Employment and Professional Training Institute (INEFP), in order to create jobs.
But she could throw no light on the contracts signed with the building company Kuyaka Construcoes, which had received five million meticais from the DTM.
She denied that a house built by Kuyaka in Muaivire, a neighbourhood in Nampula city, and also costing five million meticais belonged to her. She admitted that her daughter had lived there, but never owned it. So who did own the house?, the judge asked, and Taipo did not answer.
As for expenditure on end-of-year baskets (a kind of Christmas present usually consisting of alcoholic drinks and delicacies), Taipo said this was a tradition in the Labour Ministry which she had simply continued.
Despite her arrest, she added, the Ministry had gone on sending her a basket of goods every Christmas.
The interrogation of Taipo continues on Wednesday.