President promulgates ‘vacatio legis’ of the revision of the Penal Code

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President promulgates ‘vacatio legis’ of the revision of the Penal Code

3:23 CAT | 12 Jun 2020

File photo: Lusa

The Mozambican president on Thursday ratified the postponement of the entry into force of revisions of the Penal Code, which, among other things, now punishes unauthorised recording, loans sharking and violation of budget rules by state officials.

The law extending the ‘vacatio legis’, a Latin expression for the postponement of a law coming into force, “was approved by the Assembly of the Republic and submitted to the President of the Republic for promulgation, and the Head of State verified that it does not contradict the fundamental law,” the Mozambican presidency announced yesterday.

During discussions in parliament last week, the Mozambican Minister of Justice, Constitutional and Religious Affairs, Helena Kida, justified the postponement of the entry into force of the amendments to the Penal Code with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Unexpectedly, the country was overtaken by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, whose restrictive measures compromised the entire plan to disseminate the codes, and the training of magistrates and other judicial operatives,” Kida said.

With the postponement, agreed by consensus among the three parties represented in parliament, the document will only come into force in December.

Among the changes introduced in the Penal Code is punishment with a sentence of up to one year in prison and a corresponding fine for anyone who records, registers, uses, transmits or discloses any conversation, telephone communication, image, photo, video or electronic mail messages, via social networks or any other platform, without the owner’s consent.

Loan sharking activity will now be punishable with a prison sentence of between one and five years in prison, and two years in prison for anyone collecting debts on behalf of a loan shark.

Public servants who violate the rules of the Economic and Social Plan (PES) and the State Budget (OE) will be liable for between two and eight years in prison.

The current Penal Code was approved in 2014, replacing Mozambican criminal law that had been in force since before the country’s independence in 1975.

Source: Lusa