Mozambique: Three civil servants arrested in Beira on forgery charges

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Mozambique: Three civil servants arrested in Beira on forgery charges

3:58 CAT | 10 Dec 2020

File photo: O País

Three civil servants are being held in the city of Beira on charges of falsifying documents and abuse of office. They have allegedly issued 538 false certificates of employment to foreign citizens seeking to obtain a foreign residence document (DIRE).

This practice has cost the state more than 16 million meticais, of which only one million was recovered.

The scheme came to light on International Anti-Corruption Day.

Anastácio Matsinhe, spokesman for the Provincial Office for Combating Corruption in Sofala, said that the officials, assigned to the Provincial Directorate of Labour, had in the past two years issued 538 false certificates of employment: 177 in 2018 and 361 last year.

The documents in question were issued through a computer system called SIMIGRA. All three employees work in the Migration Department, one of them as head of the sector.

“The detainees used the numbers of certificates which already existed in the system” to issue false certificates of employment Matsinhe said, and then “mislead the provincial director, who signed the documents.”

In addition to the more-than 16 million meticais damage to the state, the whereabouts of the foreigners who requested the certificates are not known, Matsinhe said.

Matsinhe revealed that two private company workers were involved in the scheme, acting as intermediaries between the public officials and the foreigners.

“One of the two workers forged a 31,000 metical deposit slip,” suggesting that he had deposited the amount in a state account to expedite the issuing of an employment certificate. But it was all a fraud, Matsinhe said.

The Sofala Province Judicial Court recently legalised the arrest of three other senior state officials, accused of falsifying documents and passive corruption: two regional heads of investigation and intelligence in the Mozambican Tax Authority and a provincial chief of inspection assigned to the Ministry of Land and Environment.

The defendants were arrested following an investigation about a month ago after a Chinese company, Liang Xing, dedicated to exporting wood and importing artefacts, reported irregularities.

By Francisco Raiva

Source: O País