Maputo — The Mozambican Attorney-General's Office (PGR), through the Central Asset Recovery Office (GCRA) is working to recover stolen money and goods diverted illicitly from Mozambique to other countries.
The director of the GCRA, Amelia Machava, speaking on Monday at the opening of a training session on Offshore Structures and Mutual Judicial Assistance said there is plenty of evidence of the diversion of funds from the public treasury, in the name of Mozambican citizens, to acquire real estate and other property abroad.
"We have some indications", said Machava, "and so we have begun international cooperation procedures to certify these, assets, if they exist, and bring them back
The week long training session is administered by the International Asset Recovery Centre, in partnership with the Swiss organisation, the Basel Institute of Governance. The purpose is to train magistrates, members of the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic), and staff of the Financial Intelligence Office, in how to fight against financial crimes.
Machava said the idea is to ensure that the trainees will be able to investigate crimes such as money-laundering, "since they are very lucrative".
To deceive the Mozambican legal system, she added, criminals use offshore structures and tax havens, which can maximise their profits and conceal the true origin of their money. Magistrates and investigators must understand these structures, she said, in order to make it possible to deprive criminals of the proceeds of their crimes".
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Machava said that agreements have been signed with various countries, including some where tax havens are located, in an attempt to recover stolen assets. Some of the money laundered, but by no means all of it, came from the "hidden debts".
This was the scheme whereby three fraudulent and security-related Mozambican companies obtained loans of over two billion US dollars from the banks Credit Suisse and VTB of Russia in 2013 and 2014, on the basis of illicit loan guarantees signed by the Finance Minister at the time, Manuel Chang.
"Whenever it is said that some assets are salted away in a tax haven, we try to find ways of interacting with this structure so that we can recover the money", said Machava.
Assistant Attorney-General Gloria Adamo told the 25 trainees on the course that the sophistication of transnational organised crime demands that judges and law officers must understand the complex schemes involved in money laundering.
The GCRA has been operating since 2020. According to Attorney-General Beatriz Buchili, speaking to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, earlier this year, to date the GCRA has recovered assets valued at 1.3 billion meticais (about 20 million US dollars, at the current exchange rate).
