Mozambique January to June: State robbed of 79 million meticais

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Mozambique January to June: State robbed of 79 million meticais

4:13 CAT | 09 Aug 2016

Notícias / The head of GCCC Eduardo Sumana

More than 79 million meticais was abstracted fraudulently from the state treasury during the first six months of this year through various scams run by civil servants. Of this amount, according to information provided by the Central Office for Combating Corruption (GCCC), only 14 million meticais was recovered.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Eduardo Sumana explained that the diversion of funds was mostly carried out by public officials in the e-SISTAFE system the state uses to pay its suppliers of goods and services.

Sumana says that, officials, in collusion with individuals outside the state apparatus, create fake companies with fictitious names easily confused with the names of real companies operating in field relevant to tenders for public works launched by state institutions. They then open bank accounts for these fake companies and register them in the e-SISTAFE system, which, he says, facilitates this fraud on the state coffers.

“In other cases, public officials – operators, agents of e-SISTAFE – make fraudulent monetary transfers to companies belonging to themselves. Using e-SISTAFE, public funds placed in their safekeeping are stolen by submitting invoices from their own companies for alleged services that are were actually delivered,” Sumana explains.

He explained that the monetary values are then withdrawn in cash from the bank accounts of the officials’ companies and shared between them or deposited in their bank accounts or those of third parties.

“Therefore, the target is seeking at all costs to conceal the illicit origin of these funds, which substantiates typical situations of money laundering, in fact, that were offenders who have fallen in the hands of the authorities were also accused of,” he said.

According to the GCCC balance sheet, during the first six months of this year 474 cases were registered as a result of public complaints, notifications from state institutions, intervention by the office itself, and resulting from audits carried out by the Administrative Court and the General Inspectorate of Finance. Of these cases, 250 relate to accepting bribes, 52 to embezzlement and 88 to active corruption. The remainder concern crimes such as abuse of power, position or function.

In the same period, the GCCC, both central and provincial, launched 206 cases, 45 of which were settled. Ninety people were arrested in connection with these cases, of whom 61 were caught red-handed.

Source: Noticias