Mozambique: Fight against corruption in country a ‘ fallacy’ – NGO

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Mozambique: Fight against corruption in country a ‘ fallacy’ – NGO

4:37 CAT | 10 Dec 2019

File photo: Lusa

The director of Mozambican NGO Centre for Public Integrity (CIP) considered on Monday that the fight against corruption in the country is a “fallacy”, in a context in which political elites are involved in financial scandals.

“High-ranking public officials are all involved in the hidden debt scandal, having received bribes,” Edson Cortês said.

“It is very difficult” to believe that there is political will, remembering that the President of the Republic, Filipe Nyusi, appears on the payroll to receive at least one million dollars (more than 900 thousand euros).

“With everything that has been said in recent times, related to the case of debt and what has surfaced involving electoral fraud, I think corruption may have increased in Mozambique,” he said.

The Attorney General’s Office argues that the lack of an asset recovery law hinders the fight against corruption, and Cortês considers it “worrying” that, after so long, there has been no concern to legislate the creation of a law of such importance.

“This may be an indicator of unwillingness in the fight against corruption,” he said.

The asset recovery law would be “very important,” because above all it “discourages” those who are practising corruption, he said.

“In the absence of such a law, there are people who, if they were to ask you, ‘Would you defraud the state and go to jail for three or four years?’, people would think there are incentives for me to do that because after four years I would get out and get my money,’ he said.

Mozambique lost two points, going from 25 to 23, and fell five positions, from 153rd to 158th, in the 2018 Corruption Perception Index (IPC), prepared by Transparency International, published in January.

Source: Lusa