20101210
AIM

Maputo — The longest and most detailed of the cables from the US embassy in Maputo, leaked to the world by the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, contains claims that Mozambican President Armando Guebuza took a kickback of up to 50 million dollars in the handover of the Cahora Bassa dam to Mozambican control, that former Prime Minister Luisa Diogo takes bribes for the ruling Frelimo Party, with a cut for herself, and leading Frelimo parliamentarian Manuel Tome "receives pay-offs openly".

According to the author of the cable, Todd Chapman, who was then charge d'affaires at the US embassy, these sensational claims were all imparted to him in a conversation with an unnamed businessman, just referred to in the Wikileaks version of the cable as "the source".

But the source is easy to identify, since he is the owner of a milk processing factory and there is only one of those in Maputo.

AIM spoke on Friday to Chapman's source - who categorically denies telling Chapman about anything other than the problems his milk company was facing in 2009.

The source, who was unwilling to be named, told AIM that the milk factory had indeed faced unfair competition from illegal milk imports from Asia, which were driving him out of business. Among his competitors was the MBS group, owned by Mohamed Bachir Sulemane (subsequently named as a drug baron by US President Barack Obama), which was selling cheap milk from Thailand and Singapore.

The businessman protested to the Minister of Industry and Trade, to the head of the Customs Service, and went to MBS "telling them to lay off". But the company was only saved by coming to an agreement with MBS, whereby MBS became its sole distributor, taking a 10 per cent agent's fee.

The source regarded this as a good deal, one that saved the company - and later in 2010, he sold the company to MBS.

He recalls meeting Chapman at a reception in late 2009, and when the diplomat asked about the problems of his company, he told him. But then Chapman asked a range of other questions, and to most of them "I just told him I didn't know. I only knew what I read in the papers".

So Chapman's source was astonished when he read the cable that Chapman had sent to Washington in early January 2010. He was particularly angered and upset by the insults against Guebuza put into his mouth.

Chapman has the source describing Guebuza as "a vicious scorpion who will sting you".

"That hurt me a lot", the source told AIM. "I would never insult the President. I have good relations with the President. He has always behaved towards me as a gentleman".

Similarly with the claim that he had told Chapman that Luisa Diogo "was heavily involved in taking bribes for FRELIMO, of which she kept a percentage". The source said he never told Chapman anything of the sort.

On the contrary, he had great respect for Diogo. He recalled that "if there was anyone who helped our company, it was Luisa Diogo, when she was Minister of Finance" (at a time when the milk factory faced serious problems over the price of sugar).

Chapman's cable added "the source said that he has personally seen Manuel Tome, former FRELIMO Secretary General, senior member of the National Assembly, and relative of President Chissano, in MBS' office receiving pay-offs quite openly".

But the source flatly denies making any accusations against Tome. He had "never, never seen Manuel Tome in the MBS office". Furthermore, "why would MBS call me to a meeting at which Tome was taking bribes?"

Tome himself told AIM that, when he read the cable, he fell about laughing at the absurdity of the claims. "I don't do these things!", he exclaimed. "I don't do commissions and bribes".

As for Tome being related to Chissano, this merely displays Chapman's ignorance of Mozambique's geography. Chissano was born in the southern province of Gaza. Tome is of quite a different ethnic group, from the central province of Manica. They are not related by marriage either, since Chissano's wife is from the northern province of Cabo Delgado.

Chapman's cable contains a list of companies supposedly owned by Guebuza. The source told AIM he never supplied such a list to Chapman, and has no idea which companies Guebuza owns.

The list contains one enormous howler. It claims that "Guebuza also has a share in Maputo Corridor Logistics Initiative (MCLI) which controls the toll road from Maputo to South Africa". But Guebuza cannot have "a share" in the MCLI because it is not a company.

It is a non-profit making organisation, which brings together South African and Mozambican companies and investors in a drive to increase the use of the road and rail links between Maputo port and South Africa. It does not control the toll road, either - Chapman has confused it with Trans-African Concessions (TRAC), the South African company that really does run the Maputo-South Africa motorway.

Perhaps the most serious accusation which Chapman put in his source's mouth is that, in the handover of Cahora Bassa from Portuguese to Mozambican ownership, Guebuza received "an estimated commission of between $35 and $50 million".

This claim bemused the source. "How would I know that?", he asked "Where would I get such information?"

It is indeed hard to see what the owner of a processed milk factory has to do with negotiations over the future of the country's largest dam. Chapman's cable does not say who paid the alleged commission.

The Mozambican state acquired an 85 per cent stake in HCB, the Cahora Bassa operating company, through a loan of 700 million US dollars from a consortium of French and Portuguese banks. Chapman's cable says this was arranged through "a Guebuza proxy".

But no such proxy was involved. As a matter of easily verifiable fact, the Mozambican government held an international tender in early 2007 to choose the bank or banks that would finance the HCB purchase, and then hired an international auditing company to analyse the bids.

There were five bids, and the bid made by the consortium of CA Lyon of France and the Portuguese Investment Bank (BPI) was ranked the most favourable.

The complex negotiations over Cahora Bassa lasted for years. They involved two foreign governments (Portugal and South Africa) and the banks who would finance the deal. Which of these players could find a spare 50 million dollars as a kickback for Guebuza? And if there was such a kickback, why did nobody leak it to the Portuguese or South African press?

Chapman's source told AIM "I feel I have been used. This is all Todd Chapman's own agenda. He obviously imagined I would never read what he had written".

Chapman simply took his source's annoyance at the tribulations of his milk factory, and then threw in every other story he had recently heard from the ever-industrious Maputo rumour mill. He lied to Hilary Clinton and his other superiors in the State Department, putting all the wild allegations into the mouth of a serious business source.

This was Chapman's parting shot, sticking the knife into a government and ruling party that he openly disliked. He knew that he would shortly leave Maputo (he is currently in the US embassy in Afghanistan), and so he sent a lurid compilation of a few facts, a great deal of rumour and much outright fabrication to Washington.

Of course, Chapman never thought that the public would read his fictions. He counted without Wikileaks, which has done the world a service in showing us the lazy and deceitful face of what passes for American diplomacy.