The Mozambican Attorney General’s Office (PGR) has confirmed that an investigation is underway to determine the legitimacy of reports of a scheme to embezzle money at Mozambique Airlines (LAM) through automatic payment terminal (POS) machines that do not belong to the company.
“There are currently two cases before the Central Office for Combating Corruption (GCCC), one registered under number 6/2023, investigating irregularities in the management of the company, and the other, under number 21/2024, investigating the circumstances in which the POS were installed in LAM’s sales outlets, as well as their ownership,” explained the Attorney General, Beatriz Buchili.
Without giving too many details, the official, speaking on Thursday (25) in Parliament, clarified that the two cases are being investigated against some of the company’s managers.
In February, Fly Modern Ark, the consultancy hired by the government to recover LAM, denounced a scheme to embezzle money from ticket shops through automatic payment terminal (POS) machines that did not belong to the company.
“We did some lightning work with LAM’s internal security, during which we collected all the POS from the 20 ticket sales points. There are some shops where the managers themselves don’t recognise the machines and say they don’t even know who they belong to,” said the director of the restructuring project, Sérgio Matos.
At the time, he revealed that the inspection process had begun almost a fortnight ago, when the company realised that although the number of tickets sold was rising, the accounts were still far from what was expected.
“It’s selling, but the company isn’t getting all the money. In the last three months of evaluations, we saw that the difference we were getting was between 2 and 3 million dollars. In December alone, we had a deficit of 3.2 million dollars,” he noted.
Sérgio Matos also said that the inspection had found suspicious cases in the collection of cash from shops and in the fuelling of aircraft.
“An aircraft has a maximum fuel capacity of around 80,000 litres, which we also call 80 tonnes. However, we found that it was being fuelled with 95 tonnes. So the question is, where are the remaining 15 tonnes going?” he asked.
“We did some lightning work with LAM’s internal security, during which we collected all the POS from the 20 ticket sales points. There are some shops where the managers themselves don’t recognise the machines and say they don’t even know who they belong to”
In addition to these anomalies, the director denounced the discovery of an account in Malawi with 1.2 million dollars, to which no one in the company has access.
“Nobody knows how to move or withdraw this amount. There are situations of employees using or having used company funds to buy their own houses,” he concluded.
LAM is undergoing a process of revitalisation, with South African company Fly Modern Ark (FMA) managing it since April last year. The company’s strategy follows years of operational problems related to a reduced fleet and a lack of investment.
