(CNN) -- The U.S. diplomatic cables obtained and released by WikiLeaks frequently rely on unnamed sources for delicate information. But one such source -- a businessman in Mozambique -- has furiously denied making remarks about high-level corruption attributed to him by a U.S. diplomat.
A cable dated January 2010 sent by then Charge d'Affaires Todd Chapman at the U.S. Embassy covered allegations about officials enabling drug trafficking by accepting bribes. They were based on a source who said he had "personally seen" one senior official [who is named in the cable] "receiving pay-offs quite openly".
But now that source insists such words never left his mouth.
"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," the source told the state-run Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (AIM).
Several current and former officials came under attack in the cable in question. Chapman wrote that his source had told him the country's ruling party, FRELIMO, "brazenly squeezes the business community for kickbacks".
The source also supposedly called the country's president a "vicious scorpion who will sting you," and said FRELIMO and an alleged drug lord had their own clearing agent at a port. CNN
