Maputo — Nine people have been arrested in the district of Magoe, in the western Mozambican province of Tete, suspected of stealing a safe from the local administration containing more than a million meticais (over 40,000 US dollars).

The money, intended for the payment of wages to workers of the local administration, was stolen on 9 December.

Among those arrested are seven administration workers, including the head of the administrator's office and the treasurer

The public relations officer at the Tete provincial police command, Joao Sozinho, said that the money, dispatched from Tete city, was delivered in Magoe on 7 December, a Friday.

Because of the lateness of the hour, the safe was kept at the residence of the local administrator, and delivered at the administration offices on the following day, but by Monday it had vanished.

Radio Mozambique cites Sozinho as saying that "the people who stole the safe must have entered through a window that had been left ajar".

According to Sozinho, some other suspects in this case are still at large.