Maputo — Property belonging to a parliamentary deputy is to be auctioned off at the end of this month to pay part of his debt to the country's largest bank.
The deputy, Rachid Tayob, was elected in 1999 from the central province of Zambezia on the ticket of the Renamo-Electoral Union opposition coalition, but he has subsequently been expelled from Renamo.
He is a businessman who ran up debts in the 1990s of over nine billion meticais (over 375,000 US dollars at current exchange rates) to the privatised Commercial Bank of Mozambique (BCM).
This was just one of the many bad debts that brought the BCM to its knees in 2000, forced an expensive recapitalisation, and eventually the merger of the BCM and the International Bank of Mozambique (BIM).
Tayob is one of the few debtors who has been dragged before the courts, and seen his property seized. The Zambezia Provincial Law Court intends to auction the property off on 30 July, and placed an advert in Saturday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias" detailing the property.
But anyone who has followed the banking scandals has seen the advert before. For this is the third time that the court has
tried to sell Tayob's property. The previous two auctions were unsuccessful, and the court now announces that it is prepared to accept offers that are below the valuation price.
The main item on sale is Tayob's house and shop in the coastal district of Maganja da Costa, valued at 450 million meticais.
The list contains all the furniture, crockery and glassware in this establishment, and everything that was on the sale in the shop. It includes, for instance, "14 tins of pilchards, valued at 112,000 meticais" - through one may doubt whether pilchards that have been in court custody for over a year are still edible.
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Other items include "two blue plastic bowls, valued at 30,000 meticais", "four and a half boxes of children's toothbrushes valued at 174,000 meticais", "four black and brown combs, valued at 10,000 meticais", and "one pair of scissors, valued at 10,000 meticais".
The total value of Tayob's seized property is slightly more than 471 million meticais, a small fraction of his debt to the BCM. A second Zambezia businessman in debt to the BCM, Carimo Ibraimo, faces the same fate. His goods will go on sale on 24 July. In his case, this is the second time the court has tried to sell his property.
The first auction was unsuccessful, so now the court is offering the goods for half their assessed value. The property consists of furniture, air conditioners, photocopiers, refrigerators, and other electrical appliance, valued in total at 456.8 million meticais.
The most remarkable aspect of such judicial announcements is how rare they are. There are hundreds upon hundreds of bad debtors to the BCM and to the second privatised bank, Austral, and both banks pledged to use all legal means available to recover the money.
Yet only a handful of court announcements concerning actions by the banks against the debtors have been published in the press.
