Hidden debts and lack of justice explain Mozambique’s slide on corruption index – NGO

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Hidden debts and lack of justice explain Mozambique’s slide on corruption index – NGO

6:13 CAT | 26 Jan 2017

File photo / A view of Maputo city

The Mozambican Centre for Public Integrity (CPI), which monitors transparency in Mozambican public administration, has pointed to inaction by Mozambique’s organs of justice and to the so-called hidden debts as causes of the country’s slide on Transparency International’s corruption index.

Addressing Mozambique’s 30-place decline in the index released yesterday by Transparency International, CPI researcher Baltazar Faela told a press conference that the perception that Mozambique is a highly corrupt country had grown with the revelation in April 2016 that the government had secretly endorsed loans of more than EUR1 billion in favour of public companies involved in maritime security.

“I think this situation is associated with the so-called hidden debts. Domestic and international public opinion looks at this as an example of a country with deep corruption,” Faela said.

Revelations at the end of last year concerning the purchase by national carrier Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM) of two aircraft from the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer that involved the payment of bribes to company managers and other Mozambican also aggravated the perception that the country is plagued by corruption.

Faela also said that the lack of any action by the Mozambican judicial authorities in the fight against corruption has generated doubt in the country’s capacity to deal with this practice. “The prosecution has not investigated serious cases of corruption, inaction that conveys the idea that corruption goes unpunished,” Faela says.

The CPI investigator pointed to the example of the so-called hidden debts, where the Attorney General only decided on an independent international audit after considerable internal and international pressure.

“Our Public Prosecutor’s Office acts in tandem with the Government, giving the impression that it is controlled by political power and does not take action against corruption,” Faela adds. Corruption is depriving the country of the resources needed for its development and undermining national credibility with investors, he says.

Citing a CIP survey, Faela says that the country lost about US$4.8 billion (EUR4.4 billion) to corruption between 2002 and 2014. The current Mozambican government has acknowledged that corruption is a serious problem in public administration in Mozambique, and has undertaken to combat it rigorously.

Mozambique fell 30 places in the 2016 Transparency International corruption index, the biggest fall among Portuguese-speaking countries, and now occupies 142nd place globally.

Source: Observador