Mozambique: Airline finds millions embezzled from ticket sales – Lusa

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Mozambique: Airline finds millions embezzled from ticket sales – Lusa

3:58 CAT | 13 Feb 2024

File photo: Lusa

The director of restructuring at Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM) on Monday revealed the existence of a scheme to divert money from airplane ticket sales outlets using automatic payment terminal machines (TPA/POS) that do not belong to the company.

“We did a quick job with LAM’s internal security to recall all POS and, from LAM’s 20 ticket sales points, we had recalled, by Sunday, 81 POS machines. There are some stores where the heads of the establishments themselves do not recognize the machines and say they do not even know who they belong to,” Sérgio Matos told a press conference in Maputo.

The inspection began almost two weeks ago, when the company realized that, although the number of tickets sold was rising, the accounts were still far from what was expected.

“They [tickets] are being sold, but the company is not getting all the money, and in the last three months of evaluations we saw that the difference was in the order of two to three million dollars (€1.8 to 2.7 million). In the month of December alone, we have a deficit of US$3.2 million (€2.9 million),” Matos noted.

Matos also said that the inspection registered suspicious cases even when collecting cash in stores.

“The collection of cash is carried out by security companies (…). When we tried to find out, at LAM points of sale, how it is done and when they receive it, we found that, sometimes, the deposit is made three days later, which means that money is collected from the company and then the money is stored somewhere for two or three days, and only after that comes the ‘bordereau’ (document demonstrating the credits and debits of an operation),” Matos detailed.

The inspection also identified anomalies regarding the supply of fuel to the aircraft.

“If an aircraft has a maximum fuel capacity of around 80,000 litres, we call it 80 tons, [in the documents] the same aircraft is being fuelled at 95 tons. So the question is, where are the remaining 15 tons going?” he asked.

In addition to these anomalies, LAM’s restructuring director reported the discovery of an account in Malawi containing US$1.2 million (€1.1 million), to which no one in the company has access.

“Nobody knows how to move or withdraw this amount,” Matos revealed, going on to detail cases of employees “who use or have used company funds to purchase their own homes”.

LAM’s restructuring director acknowledges the existence of a years-long debt with public company Petromoc in the order of US$70 million (€64.9 million) and, in the last 45 days alone, there is record of a debt of US$300 million (€4.3 million) with the same supplier as a result of the resumption of the Maputo-Lisbon operation.

“From December to now, we only have a debt with Petromoc and we have no debt with any other fuel supplier,” Matos stressed in reaction to local press reports of company flight delays on Sunday, due to debts with fuel suppliers.

“The problem was not due to lack of payment (…) but rather due to a lack of fuel from the supplier,” Mato maintained, adding that LAM’s debt to Petromoc is now being paid.

LAM is in a process of revitalization, with South African company Fly Modern Ark (FMA) managing it since April last year according to a restructuring plan.

The company’s revitalization strategy follows years of operational problems related to a small fleet and lack of investment, with the record of some non-fatal incidents, associated by experts with poor aircraft maintenance.

LAM’s flight network has 12 destinations in the domestic market, while regionally it regularly flies to Johannesburg, Dar-Es-Salaam, Harare, Lusaka, and Cape Town, with Lisbon (since 12-12-23) the only intercontinental destination.
LAM carries out more than 40 flights daily using a fleet comprising one Boeing 737, three De Havilland Q400s and two Bombardier CRJ 900s, plus two Embraer 145 aircraft operated by its subsidiary Moçambique Expresso (MEX).

Source: Lusa