Mozambique: GCRA records 13.7 billion meticais of “incongruous assets”

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Mozambique: GCRA records 13.7 billion meticais of “incongruous assets”

3:06 CAT | 17 Jun 2025

Illustrative image: AIM

Mozambique’s Central Office for the Recovery of Assets (GCRA) announced on Monday that, between 2019 and 2024, it has recorded 13.7 billion meticais (214.4 million dollars at the current exchange rate) of “incongruous assets”.

Incongruous assets are defined as the difference between the value of a person’s assets and what would be compatible with their lawful income. Such assets are suspected of originating in criminal activities.

According to, GCRA prosecutor Jorge Chivinge – who was speaking on Monday, in Maputo, during a Seminar on Asset Recovery and Compensation for Victims, an event organized by the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP) – in 2024 alone the authorities seized over one billion meticais corresponding to incongruous assets.

Chivinge explained that the incongruous assets may not physically exist, as they result only from the sum of the assets acquired by the defendants in an illegal manner during a given period, so they may have already been sold.

“The assets covered by the GCRA investigation are those that the defendant owns or has control over and benefits from for up to five years before the date he was constituted as a defendant, including the assets he transferred to third parties and those he received”, he said.

Chivinge revealed that since 2019, a total of 153 cases related to the extended confiscation of assets have been processed, of which 71 have been concluded, equivalent to a performance rate of 46.4 percent.

“During this period, 532 vehicles, 194 properties and 7,348 miscellaneous assets were seized. The assets seized since 2020 are valued at 8.4 billion meticais, but only 899,521,367.6 meticais have already been declared as forfeit to the state. This figure corresponds to only 10.7 per cent of the total assets seized”, he said.

“The vast majority of cases are still before the courts, as assets are only considered forfeit to the Mozambican state when the sentence has become final, i.e. when the defendant has no further chance to appeal”, he added.

According to Chivinge, to solve more problems regarding corruption and recovery of assets, the activities carried out by the GCRA must be extended across the country, and coordination improved with the bodies that collaborate in asset and financial investigations.

Source: AIM