CIP demands Attorney General’s resignation

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CIP demands Attorney General’s resignation

2:55 CAT | 22 Jan 2019

Beatriz Buchili, Mozambique´s Attorney General

Mozambique’s anti-corruption body, the CIP, has demanded the resignation of the Attorney General Beatriz Buchili for “demonstrating clearly and unequivocally” efforts to obstruct the performance of justice in the hidden debts case.

In a statement released on Sunday afternoon quoted by Carta de Moçambique, CIP says the Mozambican prosecutor’s office has asked the South African judicial authorities that former finance minister Manuel Chang returns to Mozambique allegedly “to face Mozambican justice”, but “without transmitting any evidence that serious and credible steps are being taken to enable justice or the search for material truth in the process internally.”

The CIP suspects that the PGR’s request is to prevent Chang from being extradited to the United States to account for his alleged involvement in the procurement of hidden debts.

The anti-corruption body suggests “a lot of political interference” in the case in Mozambique and is therefore demanding the immediate dismissal of Buchili.

CIP recalls that Chang’s extradition request for Mozambique, produced and issued by the PGR, was confirmed on Friday by the representative of the South African Public Prosecutor’s Office in court.

It wonders what the real claims of the PGR of Mozambique were.

The CIP, now headed by Edson Cortez, recalls that Chang was detained in South Africa on the basis of a US court order and that he was a totally free man in Mozambique and abroad, without any limitations to his freedom or right to come and go, and was not a fugitive from Mozambican justice.

It is therefore not clear what are the conditions are for an extradition request for Mozambique, Cortez stated, “especially since the PGR did not announce any measure of coercion that had been arbitrated against any of the alleged defendants in Mozambique”.

Source: Folha de Maputo