MOZAMBIQUE 163 (1)

News reports & clippings - 7 May 2010

By Joseph Hanlon

Customs director assassinated

Orlando Jose, director of investigations, audit and intelligence of the Customs Service was gunned down outside his house on Monday 26 April. He had been responsible for several very high profile customs raids in recent weeks.

On 21 April a car was stopped heading for the Machipanda border post with Zimbabwe. Driven by a Lebanese citizen, it has $400,000 in cash in US dollars hidden in the door panel, which was apparently intended for the purchase of diamonds from army-controlled mines in Manicaland in Zimbabwe.

On 26 April, just three hours before he was assassinated, Jose held a press conference promising a crackdown on smuggling, is which he displayed three luxury cars which has been apprehended, one of which belonged to a powerful Nampula economic group, according to Savana. Last year Jose led a raid in which 1000 tonnes of rice was being imported without paying duty; apparently with the connivance of customs officials. The importer avoided paying a total of 6 million Meticias ($200,000) on a large rice import. Illegal cigarettes have also been apprehended.

Jose had only been in the job for a year, and Savana (30 April) quotes the director of the criminal investigation police to say it may be an inside job. Savana talks of “mafias” inside the Customs Service that feared that Jose was breaking up their networks, and notes that in the town of Belo Horizonte, 20 km from Maputo, there is “evidence of the improper enrichment” of customs officials. Savana notes that it is widely believed that “most of the white goods, appliances and computers sold in the big shops in Maputo have very attractive prices because import duties were not paid or they are linked to money laundering from drug dealing.” Goods are imported in containers via Nacala and then taken by road to Maputo. Drug money “is also reflected in the building ‘boom’ in Maputo,” says Savana.

US points to heroin trade

Mozambique continues to be an important transit point for heroin and hashish going from Pakistan to Europe, says the US Department of State’s 2010 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR). The report states that “Despite strong anticorruption rhetoric from the government, corruption is perceived as rampant in Mozambique. High-level government officials are suspected to be involved in narcotics-trafficking. As one government official put it, ‘Some fish are too big to catch.’ Inadequately trained and equipped law enforcement agencies and corruption in the police and judiciary hamper Mozambique’s interdiction efforts and makes it easier for traffickers to use Mozambique as a transit point for illegal narcotics.” The Mozambique section of the report is attached.

Comment: For more than a decade, there have been reports that Mozambique is an important transit and warehousing centre for heroin. The drug is believed to be brought from Pakistan in larger ships, moved on small boats to the coast of Cabo Delgado through the islands, stored in Nacala, and then when orders are received shipped out through Maputo or South African ports to Europe. Transfers inside Mozambique are said to be facilitated by the police and customs authorities. Although there are seizures of cocaine and cocaine smugglers, there are almost never seizures of heroin. Furthermore, there are no reported confrontations between the various heroin trading groups. This leads to the belief that the heroin trade is tightly regulated at a very high level, probably with three conditions imposed: 1) a cut of the money goes to the Frelimo party (and perhaps senior officials), 2) heroin is not sold inside Mozambique (after serious problems in Maputo a few years ago), and 3) some of the profits are invested locally (and this may help to explain some new large buildings in Maputo and Nampula). If Savana’s explanation of the murder of Orlando Jose is accepted, this could indicate friction, with drug dealers trying to move into diamonds and semi-precious stones without permission, and government trying to stop the expansion. jh

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