More than 300,000 meticais in counterfeit banknotes disappear from a District Attorney’s Office

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More than 300,000 meticais in counterfeit banknotes disappear from a District Attorney’s Office

7:21 CAT | 30 May 2023

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Notícias]

More than 300,000 meticais in counterfeit banknotes seized by Gurué District Attorney’s Office in Zambezia province have disappeared from the institution. Two citizens are being held in connection with the case, one a member of the judicial body and the other the alleged coordinator of the theft.

The counterfeit banknotes had been in the possession of the District Attorney’s Office since last year in the context of investigations into the counterfeiting of the national currency.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office is said to have made several purchases in the local market using the counterfeit banknotes, Zambezia police spokesman Sidney Lonzo told Radio Mozambique.

“This amount was withheld by the police, and the case forwarded to the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” Lonzo said. “One of the officials responsible for guarding the amount, in the dead of night, together with his friend, using keys, went to the Gurué District Attorney’s Office. It turns out that they began to make incidental purchases in the district’s markets and bars, which aroused suspicion. When screening was carried out, it was noticed that they were paying using the counterfeit notes,” he said.

Another case reported by Lonzo at his press briefing involved the detention of an employee who vandalised an automatic teller machine (ATM) in Quelimane. The detainee said that the ATM machine malfunctioned: If he took out his money, it would not let him retrieve his card, and vice versa, so he forced the ATM to surrender his card using a screwdriver.

The police said the man already had a criminal record, and had been in frequent contact with the police, “because he [routinely] demonstrates aggression towards family members”.

Watch the TVM report