Maputo, Aug. 29, 2025 (Lusa) - The Maputo City Judicial Court (TJCM) decided to put BCI Bank, a subsidiary in Mozambique of the Portuguese group Caixa Geral de Depositos (CGD), on trial in a case involving aggravated fraud against a Mozambican businessman.
In the indictment, dated 15 August, the court said it had decided to put Banco Comercial e de Investimentos (BCI) and two other senior employees of the bank, the largest in the country, on trial on suspicion of aggravated fraud against businessman Zanil Satar, as charged by the Public Prosecutor's Office (MP).
The defendants in this case, accused of acting in material co-authorship, still tried to have the indictment declared null and void because it was a semi-public offence, a request to which the TJCM did not grant, considering instead a charge of aggravated fraud because the crime ‘was committed’ with “premeditation” and ‘for a reward’, in addition to the ‘violation of a duty inherent to the position’, when the agent in question has ‘a special obligation not to commit it and to prevent it from being committed’.
Speaking to Lusa, businessman Zanil Satar says he feels ‘cheated and harmed’ by the officials and the bank, and is waiting for the trial to be scheduled for the end of September.
At issue is a criminal complaint submitted to the Public Prosecutor's Office on 22 May 2024 by the businessman against BCI and two employees, alleging that they advised him to acquire the Taverna Group, a series of restaurants and pastry shops, in 2021, with funds from HZ Holding, Sociedade de Gestão de Participações, of which he is the manager, through a promise of a financial facility of 600 million meticais (€8 million) by the bank, which later failed to materialise.
On 30 November 2021, the purchase was completed. Still, the bank, it is said, later told the businessman that it was unwilling to grant the funds involved in this investment, after the businessman acquired Grupo Taverna, which had a debt of just over 208 million meticais (€2.7 million) with BCI, according to the order.
The court order states that the businessman was informed in October 2023 that he would not receive the financial facility, despite having paid 434 million meticais (€5.8 million) from his holding company to acquire Grupo Taverna, including payment to suppliers and settlement of debts with workers.
‘Without the financing, there was clearly a decrease in the economic value of the offended party's assets, which was later demonstrated with the closure of the Mimos and Taverna companies, culminating in the dismissal of more than 420 workers,’ reads the court order.
It adds that the employees and the bank knew that the Taverna Group was in a loss-making situation which, if it continued, would not be able to pay off its debts to BCI, so ‘the defendants saw in Zanil and his companies the right person to achieve that intention of liquidating Taverna's debts in favour of BCI’.
The court states that the officials acted in a ‘premeditated and cunning manner’, with BCI obtaining a ‘primordial advantage’ by recovering the amount owed, including interest and commissions.
‘The defendants always acted in the name and interests of BCI, as well as under its constant direction (...) The conduct of the defendants had a devastating impact on the financial management of HZ Holding, which, due to the lack of promised credit, was unable to honour its commitments to suppliers, pay off debts and invest in its business,’ it says.
‘They acted freely, deliberately and knowingly, with the concrete purpose of getting the offended party to acquire the Taverna business and pay off the debt (...) obtaining illegitimate enrichment at the expense of the same, which they were not entitled to, which represented serious patrimonial damage for the offended party,’ it concludes.
In this process, the businessman has previously submitted letters requesting the intervention of the central bank and the Minister of Finance.
BCI is owened (51%) by Caixa Participações, part of the Caixa Geral de Depósitos group, which is also owned by the Portuguese bank BPI (35.67%) and directly by CGD (10.51%), among others, and closed 2024 with 2,712 employees.
PME/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
