Public debt: Attorney General will indicate experts to join investigation

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Public debt: Attorney General will indicate experts to join investigation

3:48 CAT | 15 Jul 2016

FUTEBOL - vista da cidade DE MAPUTO 0 em Mocambique quarta 20 de fevereiro de 2013. (ASF/SERGIO COSTA )

The Attorney General’s office (PGR) announced on Thursday that it would appoint national and international experts to investigate debts estimated at US$1.4 billion (about EUR 1.3 billion) incurred by the previous government between 2013 and 2014 without knowledge of both the national parliament and international financial institutions.

“The Attorney General will request the appointment of national and international experts with expertise in these matters, to help us obtain relevant and reliable information,” Deputy Attorney-General and spokesman to the Attorney General’s Office Taibo Mucobora said, speaking to the press on the sidelines of the first Joint Seminar of the Attorney General’s Office and The Mozambican Doctors Order.

Mucobora said that, after hearing the managers of the Mozambique Tuna Company (Ematum), Proindicus and Mozambique Asset Management (MAM), there are signs that there had been violation of the budget law, “in regard to non-compliance with limits and legal procedures, which implies criminal offense in the form of abuse of office or position”.

The PGR justifies the need to engage international experts on the grounds of the involvement of foreign countries in the debts and the general complexity of the case.

“The collection of this information will require a lot of work and specific knowledge in the areas of accounting and auditing. That is why the PGR will request the appointment of national and international experts,” Mucobora explained.

Mucobora said that any date for the nomination of experts remains to be established, and warned that the complexity of the matter could lengthen the process.

“This means resorting to international cooperation, because, for this information, we need to go abroad. As you know, there are several countries involved. This is still in process. Meaning that the identification of experts and countries is still in process. This is a complex process involving a lot of money and many people and countries, and all this has to be analysed carefully,” he said.

Asked if the former finance minister, Manuel Chang, had been questioned by the PGR, as reported in the national press, Mucobora refused to comment, saying only: “As I said, we only heard the managers of the three companies.”

The debts were incurred during the government led by former president Armando Guebuza but not revealed to the public or Mozambique’s cooperation partners, resulting in the G14 donor group and the International Monetary Fund suspending their support to the state budget.

In a press release issued at the end of last May, the partners condition the resumption of their support to a debate between the executive and national institutions on the measures it intends to implement to ensure maximum transparency and accountability.

Source: A Bola