Plan to divide the country: Carlos Do Rosário was right

The most notorious defendant of the hidden debts tried unsuccessfully to explain to the 6th Section of the Maputo City Judicial Court in 2022 that there was a plan underway to divide and sell the country. He also tried unsuccessfully to explain what the Integrated Monitoring and Protection System (SIMP) for the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) was.

He explained the operational vehicles and companies that the security service itself had created to ensure that the country's ambitious security project materialized, namely PROINDICUS, which would be combined with EMATUM and MAM, working in coordination using their security components.

SIMP was an expanded version of Proindicus for the protection of maritime, land and riverine lake borders. This mission would be materialized by MAM, whose creation cost 540 million USD. This company was created to guarantee the security of hydrocarbon exploitation, a sector considered lucrative.

António Carlos do Rosário said in court that MAM was considered “the goose that laid the golden eggs”, and that if the company had worked to its full potential, it would have earned the state 60 million dollars a year, guaranteeing that the same company would have taken on business with large engineering and floating platform construction companies.

He accused certain ministers in President Nyusi's government of sabotaging MAM, because, according to him, if the company had functioned fully, it would have harmed interests and deals done through the back door. 

At the time (2022), the Mozambican spy explained that the dream of seeing Mozambique united from Rovuma to Maputo did not correspond to the current agenda. He warned that a plan was afoot to divide or dismember the country, but was accused of being a liar and a manipulator.

“There is a meeting being held in Europe which says that the northern part of the river that separates Zambézia and Nampula has to be a border. The northern part has to be a different state,” said Do Rosário, stressing that a united country was unviable for the interests of the conspirators.

Two years after the famous trial, it seems that time has proven the defendant right. Recently, the French petrochemical company TotalEnergies, which is leading the Mozambique LNG project, signed a billion-dollar contract, presumed to be in the region of 1.5 billion USD, with a Rwandan security company, ISCO, to do exactly the job that would have been done by MAM, had it been operationalized. However, the government of the day abolished MAM.

ISCO Security is a joint venture between Rwanda's ISCO Global Limited and a Mozambican company, whose identity is not known, to provide security services in Afungi, protecting the exploitation of natural gas.

The Mozambican critics consider that the contracting of this company represents a danger to sovereignty, since it involves the presence of a foreign force on home soil.

During the closing arguments of the trial in the Hidden Debts case, the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office suggested that the military equipment supplied by Privinvest to EMATUM, PROINDICUS and MAM should be returned. This equipment included radars, aircraft and boats for the defense of sovereignty. 

“As a Mozambican I am offended when we have a country being devastated by terrorists and the dignified representative of the state proposes the return of the equipment. It says it all about the agenda. It's clear that our interest is not in guaranteeing Mozambique's security. Simple as that,” the defendant vented in court.

Reported in the book “Hidden Debts in the Voice of the Protagonists”, Alberto Mondlane, a retired general and Minister of the Interior and member of the Joint Command and operative of the Defense and Security Forces during the Guebuza government, heard in February 2022, said that “the enemy has captured our security and today we are suffering from it”.

Do Rosário tried to draw attention to aspects that he considered sensitive to “State Security” and the risk of exposing them in public in a televised trial. Even if MAM were operational, the way it was revealed in the trial would make it difficult for it to act as a security company along the lines that the Mozambican secret service had envisioned.

Armando Guebuza, a former statesman, also drew attention to this issue. As a witness in the case, he told the court that he shouldn't talk about security, given the sensitivity of the subject.

“This is a defense and security issue. I think too much has been said about security and we shouldn't do that. We have to defend our sovereignty,” said Guebuza in response to a question from the court during his hearing.

It should be noted that on May 5 this year, a triangular meeting took place in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, between Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and the CEO of TotalEnergies, Patrick Pouyané, concessionaire for area 1 of the Rovuma basin, to discuss security around the Palma gas project.

Speaking about the tripartite talks, Nyusi assured the Mozambican press that the meeting served to discuss security in Cabo Delgado and the state of play in the northern operational theater, looking at the roles that the parties play for security in that region.

“At the triangular meeting we talked about security issues in the area. It was a good conversation, it didn't take long but it was necessary given that it's a priority issue,” said Nyusi at a press conference marking the end of his three-day visit to Rwanda.

The Mozambican critic believes that it was at this meeting that the agreement between TotalEnergies and Rwanda's ISCO was discussed.