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The Office of the US Embassy in Maputo for Security Cooperation on Tuesday donated equipment to the boarding unit of the Mozambican navy equipment valued at 40,000 US dollars.
According to a press release from the embassy, the purpose of this grant is “to strengthen Mozambique’s capacity for maritime security”.
The materials provided will equip a six member team for operations of visiting, boarding, search and seizure (VBSS). The VBSS team will be in charge of boarding ships in Mozambique’s territorial waters in order to carry out customs and security inspections, with the goal of preventing such crimes as illegal fishing, piracy, drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
The release adds that every year the OSC works with the Mozambican navy to strengthen its capacity, by sending Mozambican sailors and marines for courses designed for boarding officers.
The US Embassy, it says, “is a partner of the Mozambican Defence Ministry in facing organised transnational crime and illicit trafficking. Strengthening the VBSS capacity of the Mozambican navy is a means of confronting and dissuading the criminal bodies that operate in Mozambique’s territorial waters”.
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This grant is further evidence of how ineffective the secretive maritime security programme designed by the previous government, under President Armando Guebuza, has proved to be. In 2013 and 2014, the Guebuza government illegally guaranteed loans of over two billion US dollars from European banks (Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia) to three security related companies – Ematum (Mozambique Tuna Company), Proindicus and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management).
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The justification for these loans (particularly the 622 million dollars for Proindicus) was that they would help ensure security in Mozambique’s Exclusive Economic Zone. But the companies are largely inactive and quite unable to repay the loans, and have thus made little or no difference to maritime security.
If Proindicus was doing the job for which it was supposedly set up, there would be no reason to acquire VBSS equipment from the United States.
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