Mozambique’s Deputy Attorney-General, Alberto Paulo, has said that financial crime poses a great challenge to the country, requiring a greater capacity from the state, as well as the enacting of a legal framework with international standards.
Paulo said that this is because the proceeds from financial crime affords criminals the possibility of acquiring new technologies and recruitment of highly specialised human resources.
He was speaking on the margins of a seminar on “The role of Civil Forfeiture in Asset Recovery” organised by the Attorney-General-s Office (PGR).
Comment
Mozambican authorities seem to continue with the strategy of debating issues for the record, and not necessarily because they are going through with the recommendations.
The problems in the criminal area are well known as are the solutions. What is missing is implementation, something society has been clamouring for. Why then is implementation delayed or postponed?
In Mozambique, crime pays and a lot. Criminal groups’ tentacles have dangerously reached all the way to the state superstructure through various routes, including social bonds.
Once ensconced, they manipulate the justice system, pitting one institution against another, with each institution cancelling the work of the other, while crime (from drug trafficking to kidnapping, from robbery to every type of fraud and environmental crimes, among others) continues to feed the criminal syndicates sponsored by state figures from political to law enforcement agencies.
Seminars such as the one organised by the PGR are quite frequent, with more money being spent, but arriving at the same conclusions; on the one hand, reinforcing the narrative of the need for fighting crime. And on the other, while weakening the state capacity to fight it.
The gangs in the institutions fight to grab the money made available to them. They distribute the ill-gotten gains, equipment and trips and make a show of arresting the weakest links in the criminal chain while the big fish (perpetrators and beneficiaries) remain unpunished and unknown.
Worse: criminal proceeds (drugs, wildlife trophies, money, etc.) disappear from state custody and return to the criminal circuit.
The seminars could represent for the state an “indicator of commitment” for fighting crime, while for the sceptical, it is for appearance’s sake since crime continues to complicate the country’s security situation in tandem with the insurgency in Cabo Delgado already in its fifth year.
Thus, with Mozambique in the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)’s grey list, it behoves government to appear to be implementing a series of measure in order to have the country removed from the list, meaning another one for the record.
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