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Beatriz Buchili was speking in the city of Praia, where she is on an official visit to invitation of her Cape Verdean counterpart, José Luís Landim. [File photo: Procuradoria Geral de Cabo Verde]
The Attorney Generals of Mozambique and Cabo Verde expressed in Praia their willingness to strengthen cooperation in preventing and fighting organised and transnational crime.
“Where we have greater focus is in preventing and fighting organised and transnational crime, and we want to bet in this area, in training, in the exchange and sharing of legislation and in the other area to strengthen the activities of our Public Prosecutors”, the Attorney General of Mozambique, Beatriz Buchili, who is visiting the country at the invitation of her Cape Verdean counterpart, José Luís Landim, told Lusa in Praia on Wednesday.
The Mozambican Attorney General said that the two countries had been boosting cooperation in several multilateral forums, particularly at the level of the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP) and the Association of Attorneys General of Africa, but were now doing the same at the bilateral level.
The visit to Cabo Verde, she said, came after her counterpart had done the same last year in Mozambique, signing a memorandum of understanding that covered several areas of cooperation, particularly in the control of legality, defence of collective and diffuse interests, in the area of the environment and cultural heritage, for example.
The head of the Mozambican Public Prosecutor’s Office noted that organised crime, such as drug trafficking, has no borders and is usually transnational, with several countries involved, and Cabo Verde and Mozambique are no strangers.
“We often need to carry out joint investigations, and even though they are not directly related to our countries, we cooperate in terms of sharing legislation, expertise and other information,” Buchili said, adding that she was interested in strengthening collaboration in judicial training.
In this case, she said that Cabo Verde had “a lot of experience” and had already had to deal with complex drug trafficking cases that it had successfully dealt with, and the two countries shared information in that area.
The other area that the two countries want to cooperate on is asset recovery to “show that crime does not pay. “In this area, we are strengthening our cooperation at the CPLP level, and we intend to gather a lot of experience regarding this.”
The Attorney General of the Republic (PGR) of Cabo Verde, José Landim, also noted that in the case of organised crime, there are crimes that may be being committed at the same time in several countries, so he stressed the importance of sharing information.
“And we have the advantage that both in Cabo Verde and in Mozambique, the central authority for external and international cooperation is the Attorney General’s Office because there are countries where the system is different, and the connection may not be very functional,” Landim explained, indicating that when he was in Mozambique, he saw many good practices and situations that Cabo Verde can also learn from that country.
Another point of possible cooperation between the two countries is at the level of terrorism, Cabo Verde’s Attorney General also pointed out, saying that it is a crime that seems to be far away, but he stressed that it should not be fought only in the field of terrorists.
“Because the big problem of terrorists is their financing, and that goes all over the world, sometimes not knowing where it begins and where it ends, and in this sector, although we are not being blighted by terrorism, we have the problem of financing, which may pass through Cabo Verde, and we are taking all measures to keep this situation in mind and, if necessary, the sharing of information is very important,” Landim said.
Also, as part of the visit to Cabo Verde, the Mozambican Attorney General held meetings with representatives of the bodies of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, with the heads of the bodies of the Administration of Justice, namely the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court of Justice, Ministry of Justice and the Supreme Council of the Judiciary.
On Friday, she will deliver a speech on the island of São Vicente on “Ethics and Integrity of Public Prosecutors”.
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