At least 27 public officials were accused this year in cases linked to corruption in central Mozambique, the Sofala Provincial Anti-Corruption Office announced today.
Speaking to journalists in the city of Beira, the director of that Public Prosecutor's Office, Bernardo Duce, says that there continue to be instances of public servants making the provision of services to citizens conditional on the payment of monetary values not established by law, and for their own benefit, and cases of citizens who, on their own initiative, try to pay these employees in exchange for acts in public administration.
"To reverse the current scenario, we ask for the involvement of all segments of society to combat it, considering that this type of crime hinders the socioeconomic development of this province and the country", he stressed.
From the analysis of the aforementioned processes, Bernardo Duce insisted, it is concluded that there continues to be involvement in acts of corruption by public servants at different levels and that, in isolation or in coordination with users, they take advantage of their functions to appropriate public resources.
"We are aware that the numbers indicated may not represent the total number of corruption cases occurring in our province", he admitted.
As of November, he detailed, 34 defendants had been named in these cases in the province of Sofala, of which 27 are public servants and seven private sector workers, 11 of whom were arrested for a "flagrant crime".
He added that this total involves a universe of 92 processes processed from January to November in the central region of Mozambique, with 22 carried forward from 2023 and the remaining 70 initiated this year.
Of the total number of cases processed, 61 were concluded, of which 30 were reported and sent to the courts for trial, and 15 were archived due to lack of evidence for formal accusation, while another 16 were sent to different bodies, due to the matter.
