Maputo — Seven years after the murder of banker Antonio Siba-Siba Macuacua, on 11 August 2001, relatives, friends and citizens outraged by the unsolved crime gathered in front of the murder site on Monday.

Led by Siba-Siba's widow, Aquina Manjate, they laid wreaths at the plaque in his memory at the headquarters of what was once the Austral Bank, and is now Barclays Bank-Mozambique. The plaque is near the stairwell down which Siba-Siba's body was thrown seven years ago.

Addressing the crowd, Mozambican theatre director Manuela Soeiro declared "We don't want to live in fear. We shall never forget Siba-Siba".

"We want justice in this country", she said. "We shall never forget our heroes - Eduardo Mondlane, Samora Machel, Carlos Cardoso, Siba-Sba Macuacua".

Siba-Siba had been head of banking supervision in the Bank of Mozambique But when the privatised Austral Bank came close to collapse, in April 2001, the central bank put him at the head of an interim board of directors, charged with ascertaining the true financial situation of the bank, and preparing a new privatization.

Austral was once the state-owned People's Development Bank (BPD). Under pressure from the World Bank and the IMF to pull the state out of commercial banking, the Mozambican government sold off 60 per cent of the Austral shares in 1997 to a Mozambican-Malaysian consortium. The dominant partner in the bank was the Malaysian Southern Bank Berhard, and the new chairman of the board was former industry minister Octavio Muthemba.

The new owners changed the bank's name and embarked on a ruinous loans policy. Loans were given without firm guarantees that the beneficiaries would be able to pay the money back. By the end of 2000, about 30 per cent of the Austral credit portfolio consisted of non-performing loans. But rather than recapitalize the bank, the private owners walked away. They returned their shares to the Bank of Mozambique, and the Malaysians quickly fled the country.

Siba-Siba worked to clean up the bank. He rescinded useless contracts signed by the previous board - including one that appointed Nyimpine Chissano, son of the then president Joaquim Chissano, as an adviser on a salary of 3,000 US dollars a month. He pursued a vigorous debt collection policy, and even published the names of over 2,000 debtors in the pages of the country's main daily paper, "Noticias".

He made enemies. And on 11 August 2001, his body was found at the bottom of the stairwell at Austral headquarters. South African forensic police were called in, who confirmed that Siba-Siba had been murdered.

Since then the investigation appears to have gone nowhere, despite the government's promises to his family to hunt down the killers.

No-one has been arrested, let alone charged, with the murder, or with any crime in connection with the looting of the bank. Under pressure from donors, the government ordered a forensic audit of the Austral accounts (paid for by Norwegian and Swedish money). But the audit remains a secret document, and none of its conclusions have been published.

Attorney-General Augusto Paulino, appointed to the post a year ago, pledged to make the Siba-Siba and Austral cases a priority This renewed commitment led to prosecutors questioning Muthemba and three other former bank officials in July.

Commenting on the case, Marcelo Mosse, executive director of the anti-corruption NGO, the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), declared "We hope that the Attorney-General will mange to wipe away the image of ineffectiveness that has marked his institution in recent years. We are all anxious that this case should be solved".