30 April 2008
Maputo — Mozambique's Central Office for the Fight Against Corruption (GCCC), and its provincial branches, have handled a total of 371 cases since it was set up in 2005, according to Attorney-General Augusto Paulino, but not one of them has yet come to a successful conclusion.
Giving his annual report to the country's parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Paulino said that after he took office last August he discovered that the GCCC was weighed down with cases that had nothing to do with corruption as defined in Mozambican legislation.
Indeed, many of the cases inherited from the GCCC's predecessor, the Anti-Corruption Unit, contained no evidence of any wrongdoing whatever. Other cases on the GCCC desk concerned real enough crimes - including murder, theft of state funds, swindles, and forgery - but which were not part of its mandate.
So Paulino's team had to scrap 92 cases for which there was no evidence that any crime had been committed. The 104 cases of crimes which do not fit the GCCC's mandate were sent to the provincial attorneys' offices for purposes of prosecution. That left 156 cases that are still under investigation, and a mere 19 where charges are now being drawn up. Paulino did not give details on any of these cases.
Paulino said that he had reorganized the GCCC providing it with additional human resources. Thus inspectors of the Criminal Investigation Police (PIC) have been allocated to the GCCC to deal with the necessary investigations, freeing prosecutors for the tasks of interrogation.
He believed this was speeding matters up. After each investigation, a report is delivered to GCCC director Ana Gemo, with a proposal either to shelve the case, or to send it to the relevant attorney's office (since the GCCC itself is not empowered to lay charges before courts).
"This has allowed us to overcome the procedural irregularities which had ensured that cases were rejected by the courts because of their doubts as to the legitimacy of the GCCC itself pressing charges", said Paulino.
He added that he had reduced the number of trips abroad made by GCCC prosecutors and investigators, so that they could concentrate on their main task of bringing cases of corruption to the courts,
Paulino assured the Assembly that his office is taking seriously the assassination in August 2001 of Antonio Siba-Siba Macuacua, the interim chairperson of the scandal-ridden Austral Bank. This bank was privatized in 1997, when 60 per cent of its shares were sold to a Malaysian-Mozambican consortium. Reckless lending over the ensuing four years brought the bank to the brink of collapse.
The private owners handed their shares back to the state in April 2001, and the Malaysians fled the country. The Bank of Mozambique appointed Siba-Siba, who had been its Director of Banking Supervision, to ascertain the true financial situation of Austral. Shortly after he had begun a vigorous programme of loan recovery, Siba-Siba was murdered and his body thrown down the stairwell at Austral headquarters.
Almost seven years have passed, and no-one has been charged with this crime. Paulino said that he has set up a team headed by a prosecutor, and including PIC officers, which is dealing exclusively with the Siba-Siba murder and the associated looting of Austral.
A second dedicated team is dealing with a massive theft of state property from the Ministry of the Interior. An audit of the Ministry discovered the theft. There are 11 suspects (whom he did not name), and although the case began over two years ago, in March 2006, it is still at the stage of preparatory investigation.
A similar theft was uncovered in the General Command of the Police, and there are 13 suspects, Paulino's office has requested that the General Inspectorate of Finance carry out a full audit of the police command.
Paulino confirmed that three policemen are under arrest for the summary executions of prisoners in April 2007 at a sports field in the Maputo suburb of Costa do Sol. This case is now before the Maputo City Court.
As for the fire that swept through the Ministry of Agriculture in May 2007, Paulino said criminal investigations were begun, but concluded this was not a case of arson. Experts sifting through the ashes concluded there was no sign that the fire had been started deliberately.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
