Mozambique: Acquisition of new aircraft sabotaged by corrupt LAM staff – AIM | Watch

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Mozambique: Acquisition of new aircraft sabotaged by corrupt LAM staff – AIM | Watch

4:02 CAT | 29 Apr 2025

Photo: Notícias

The Mozambican government’s attempts to rescue Mozambique Airlines (LAM) were sabotaged by airline staff with conflicts of interest, President Daniel Chapo accused on Monday.

Chapo was giving a speech during a ceremony in Maputo celebrating the results achieved during the first 100 days of the Chapo government. This speech was largely an upbeat list of achievements made over the previous three months.

But the optimistic tone of Chapo’s summary broke down when he turned to LAM. He recalled that one of the targets for the first 100 days was to acquire three new aircraft for LAM.

That did not happen because “we discovered that, inside our company, there are people with conflicts of interest”, said the President. “They are not interested in LAM owning its own aircraft. They are interested in LAM continuing to hire planes, because with the hire of aircraft they earn commissions”.

Chapo did not name these corrupt officials. Instead, he claimed that the government had intervened to take control of LAM’s direction.

“We decided to restructure LAM”, he said. “So we had to cancel and re-orient the entire process, since it is important to look after the interests of the people, and not the interests of individuals and groups”.

Restructuring, added Chapo, would include “restructuring people so that they go and sit down at home, and let the rest of us work”. The restructuring will culminate in the acquisition of aircraft.

“We are saying this”, he added, “because the case of the first three aircraft meant that people left Mozambique with money from the new shareholders, and went to Europe to inspect aircraft. They returned to Mozambique and said they did not manage to inspect a single aircraft”.

“I want to use this occasion to tell the Mozambican people that this is a phase through which we are passing, and that after the storm comes the calm”, Chapo declared.

He did not say which LAM officials had gone to fritter away shareholders’ money in Europe.

This is just the latest in a long line of scandals and frauds hitting LAM. For instance, in 2009 the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer paid bribes of 800,000 US dollars to Mozambican officials to secure the purchase of Embraer aircraft by LAM. Thanks to investigations by Brazilian and US prosecutors much of this scandal is now out in the open.

According to the documents from the Brazilian Federal Prosecutor’s office, the bribe was demanded by the then chairperson of the LAM board, Jose Viegas, and Mateus Zimba, then the Mozambique representative of the South African petrochemical company Sasol, acted as an intermediary who set up a shell company, named Xihevele and registered in Sao Tome, that handled the 800,000 dollar bribe.

From Embraer’s viewpoint the bribe appeared successful, since it resulted in LAM acquiring two Embraer-190 planes, for 32 million dollars each. At the time, Mozambique’s Central Office for the Fight against Corruption said it was investigating all the staff employed by LAM in 2008-2009, and any third parties involved in the acquisition of the Embraer aircraft. The results, if any, of these investigations are not public knowledge.

Another civil aviation scandal involved unnamed Mozambican officials taking a bribe of 900,000 dollars from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. This bribe was apparently connected with the construction of an international airport at Nacala, on the northern coast. The conversion of the old Nacala air base into an international airport cost 200 million dollars – and appears to have been a spectacular waste, since the only airline flying to Nacala is LAM.