2010-12-23 00:33:42     Xinhua      Web Editor: Luo 

http://english.cri.cn/6966/2010/12/23/2742s611542.htm

Mozambique is intensifying efforts to quench drug trafficking which has been increasing in the last few years.

Criminals have been using Mozambique as one of the corridors for drug trafficking in southern Africa, and most of the drugs enter neighboring South Africa, through the former Portuguese colony to Europe, according to the authorities here.

Most of the drugs come from Brazil, and in the last few years, many people, including Mozambicans and foreign nationals have been caught at Maputo, Beira and Nampula airports.

About twenty people are serving jail sentences in the country, accused of drug trafficking. Most of the traffickers are women.

The crime has prompted Mozambique's Attorney General Augusto Paulino to warn state institutions to prevent the country's borders from being corridors for drug trafficking and money laundering.

Speaking on Tuesday in the southern city of Matola where he signed a memorandum of understanding between his office and the Mozambican Tax Authority (AT), designed to strengthen coordination in the fight against crime, Paulino said that proof that Mozambique is used as a corridor for drugs to reach other countries is not hard to find.

Paulino mentioned a case that occurred in August when a truck from Malawi, heading for Zimbabwe, overturned on the Samora Machel Bridge over the Zambezi, in the western Mozambican city of Tete.

The cargo it was transporting, declared as tobacco at the Calomwe border post, was scattered across the bridge.

When it was collected, it was found that, in addition to sacks of tobacco, the cargo also contained almost a tonne (947 kilo) of cannabis.

Paulino, noting that the drug had not been detected at the border, added "Imagine how many trucks that did not fall over have taken the same route ?C and it is entirely reasonable to ask ourselves whether all the cargo they were carrying was legitimate".

Another case of drug trafficking concerns an announcement by the U.S. President, Barack Obama, two months ago, that Suleiman Bachir was a drug baron in Mozambique.

Bachir is banned from doing business with American people, and Washington prohibits its citizens to shopping in Bachir's shopping Malls in Maputo and elsewhere.

Five years ago, the Mozambican authorities apprehended a cargo of 20 tonnes of the drug hashish off the coast of the northern province of Cabo Delgado, abandoned by its owners.

Up to now, no one has been arrested. Two years ago, the police discovered more than 12 tonnes of hashish in the southern province of Inhambane.

The police believe that the consignment was also abandoned by the criminals off the Indian Ocean, after they realized that the law-enforcement agents were in the area, during the night.

The attorney general also said he was disturbed to read of Mozambicans caught in neighboring countries with large sums of money on their person.

The latest such case is that of businessman Momed Khalid Ayoob, caught at Matsapa International Airport in Swaziland, in possession of 18 million rands (2.6 million U. S. dollars) in banknotes.

Paulino said the fact that these people were not intercepted at the Mozambican border indicated "a pact of silence resulting from bribes paid to agents of our border control services".

Such situations, he insisted, demanded "that we change our attitude and remove from our ranks behavior that brings no credit to ourselves and our institutions".

For Attoney Paulino, "there is complicity on the part of the country's policemen, for sure."