Mozambican prosecutors will investigate LAM bribe – AIM report

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Mozambican prosecutors will investigate LAM bribe – AIM report

6:59 CAT | 28 Oct 2016

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Assistant Attorney-General and spokesperson for the Mozambican Attorney-General’s Office (PGR), Taibo Mocubora, pledged on Friday that prosecutors will investigate the case of an official of Mozambique Airlines (LAM), so far unnamed, who took an 800,000 US dollar bribe from the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer. Embraer.

The bribe became public knowledge on Monday when the US Justice Department announced that Embraer had agreed to pay fines totaling over 200 million dollars for bribing officials in four countries (Mozambique, India, Saudi Arabia and the Dominican Republic).

Under questioning, Embraer admitted that its executives had bribed foreign government officials and had falsified records in connection with aircraft sales.

The Mozambican connection was a bribe of 800,000 dollars paid via what the Justice Department describes as “a false agency agreement with an intermediary designated by a high-level official” in LAM. The purpose of the bribe was to secure LAM’s agreement to purchase two aircraft from Embraer for approximately 65 million dollars.

At a Maputo press conference, Mocubora said the US Justice Department statement would be treated like any other source. “From this information, we shall open a preliminary investigation to ascertain the veracity of the facts”, he said.

The PGR could not accept the accusation as fact just because it was in a US Justice Department statement. “There must be an investigation in Mozambique in order to take the appropriate measures”, he said.

Mucobora pointed out that the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption (GCCC) has already audited LAM in connection with earlier cases. In late September the GCCC had announced it was prosecuting the former LAM financial director, Jeremias Tchamo, for abuse of his office.

He is accused of ensuring that LAM signed 25 contracts with a building company owned by his brother, who was also a LAM employee. LAM paid this company a total of 5.3 million meticais (about 190,000 US dollars, at the exchange rate of the time).

During its investigations, the GCCC said it also “became aware of some facts concerning the purchase, sale and hire of two Q 400 aircraft, in a case involving LAM and a foreign company”. The summary analysis of this case “raised suspicions as to the use of the sum derived from the sale of the aircraft”.

The Q 400 is manufactured by the Canadian company bombardier Aerospace. LAM took possession of two of these planes in 2008, the same year that the bribe was paid for the two Embraers.

Asked about abuses in Mozambican prisons, mentioned last week by the Ombudsman, Jose Abudo, in his annual report to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, particularly the fact that some prisoners are not released, even after serving their sentences, and others are incarcerated long after the legal period of preventive detention has expired, Mocubura described these as “isolated cases”.

He said the instructions from the PGR are that, whenever such cases are discovered, the prisoners concerned must be released immediately, “and our attorneys are doing this”.

“We face constraints so that we cannot always reach particular prisons in due time”, Mocubora added. “But we have done what is possible to ensure compliance with the law”.

As for the independent audit into the loans granted with illicit government guarantees to the quasi-public companies Ematum, Proindicus and MAM (Mozambique Asset Management), Mocubora confirmed that the PGR wants to push ahead as quickly as possible with appointing an auditor.

Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, Prime Minister Carlos Agostinho do Rosario announced that the PGR will soon launch an international tender to select an auditor.

Mocubora said the matter is urgent. “Everything is being done to ensure that the auditor is selected quickly”, he said. “It is in the interest of the PGR that the audit should happen”.

The PGR had called the press conference to announce the events that will be held next week, to mark “Legality Day”. These commemorations are held every year to mark the anniversary of a momentous speech given by the country’s first President, Samora Machel, on 5 November 1981, in which Machel denounced abuses committed by the defence and security forces, and stressed the need to uphold the law, and guarantee that citizens enjoy access to justice.

The events scheduled for next week include visits to prisons by senior figures in the administration of justice, and lectures and television debates on such matters as trafficking in human beings and their body parts, and the threats to protected wildlife species.

Source: AIM