Mozambique: Revised Penal Code to take effect in January

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Mozambique: Revised Penal Code to take effect in January

2:44 CAT | 08 Dec 2020

File photo: Lusa

The latest amendments to the Mozambican Penal Code will take effect from January 2021, after a six-month delay due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a parliamentary source told Lusa on Monday.

António Boene, Chairman of the Commission on Constitutional Affairs, Human Rights and Legality of the Assembly of the Republic (AR), said that the deadline for the entry into force of the revised Penal Code is December 31, with the legal text to be effective as of January 1.

“When the government asked in June to delay the entry into force of the amendments to the Penal Code for six months, it was then established that the revisions would take effect from the first day of January next year,” António Boene said.

The deputy said that, in the last few months, after the suspension of the amendments to the Penal Code, a proposal for the revision of two articles was deposited in parliament, and could be discussed this week. Boene did not, however, specify the content of the initiative.

The revised Penal Code punishes among other crimes, unauthorised recordings, loan sharks and violation of budget rules by state officials.

Imprisonment of up to one year and a corresponding fine will apply to anyone who records, registers, uses, transmits or disseminates any conversation, telephone communication, image, photo, video or e-mail on a social network or in an email message without the owner’s consent.

Loan sharking will be punishable with between one and five years in prison, with two years in prison for those who collect 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 sentenced to between two and eight years in prison.

Mozambique’s current Penal Code was approved in 2014, replacing the one in use since before independence in 1975.

Source: Lusa