Public Attorney and PRM Quarrel Over 16 Arrested for Illegal Currency Exchange – Mozambique

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Public Attorney and PRM Quarrel Over 16 Arrested for Illegal Currency Exchange – Mozambique

7:56 CAT | 19 Jan 2016

In file Club of Mozambique.

The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) in Manica is at loggerheads with the Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM) there, having issued a warrant for the immediate release of 16 alleged illegal currency changers it considers to have been arrest improperly.

Public Attorney Bartolomeu Goba, assigned to the area to replace the provincial chief prosecutor, is quoted by Notícias as saying the actions of the police were illegal and therefore the arrests irregular, and that the exchange of foreign currency as practiced by the accused was not in any case a crime.

The 16 citizens, arrested last Friday, were released two days later, with the prosecutor arguing that the Criminal Code does not consider informal exchange activity a crime but only a transgression of the rules governing the conduct of business.

Provincial commander of the PRM in Manica, Armando Mude, did not substantiate the reasons for the detentions, but noted that the currency changers had confessed at the time of their arrest by the PRM’s 1st Squadron.

Asked to comment on the Attorney General’s decision not to charge the detainees, Mude said that it was the result of a misunderstanding between the two institutions, and that the police would have issued an arrest warrant, but that it had been ignored by the Attorney General allegedly to “avoid illegalities”.

Source: Folha de Maputo