Mozambique: Call for investigation chiefs to combat kidnapping, money laundering – Watch

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Mozambique: Call for investigation chiefs to combat kidnapping, money laundering – Watch

7:00 CAT | 21 Mar 2025

Screen grab: Lusa

Mozambique’s minister of the interior on Wednesday asked the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) to act to combat crimes of kidnapping, money laundering and terrorist financing, and to speed up the creation of a new crime prevention unit.

“SERNIC is challenged to be more dynamic in preventing, combating and investigating organised and transnational crime, especially kidnapping crimes, which are crystallising the feeling of insecurity and impunity,” said minister Paulo Chachine, after swearing in the service’s new leaders.

The minister called on the newly sworn in officials to speed up the clarification of crimes, pointing above all to kidnappings which, he emphasised, have “been challenging” the capacity for prevention and investigation, and which are a concern for families and the country’s economy.

“We also expect the adoption of tough measures in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing and related crimes, through the scrupulous application of special investigation techniques and other modern mechanisms in the fight against organised and transnational crime,” the minister added.

He asked the new SERNIC chiefs to speed up the creation of a unit to prevent and combat organised and transnational crime, the aim of which is to strengthen the fight against organised crime in the country. He also defended the need to improve the service’s performance, especially in the fight against crimes that involve the use of information technology.

Since 2011, there has been a wave of kidnappings in Mozambique, with the victims mainly businesspeople and their families, predominately from the South Asian community, which dominates commerce in the urban centres of the country’s provincial capitals.

Around 150 businesspeople have been kidnapped in Mozambique in the last 12 years and around 100 have left the country out of fear, according to figures released in July by the Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique, which has been urging the government to take action.

In April 2024, the then attorney general, Beatriz Buchili, told members of parliament that the majority of kidnappings committed in Mozambique are planned outside the country, especially in South Africa.

By March of last year, there had been a total of 185 kidnappings and at least 288 people had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in this type of crime since 2011, according to the latest figures from the Ministry of the Interior.