Africa-Press – Mozambique. The detention last week of 16 staff of the national road transport institute (INATTER, now re-baptised as INATRO) on corruption charges was the result of two years of investigations, according to the director of the Central Office for the Fight against Corruption, Ana Maria Gemo, cited by the independent television station, STV.
The detentions, she said had become inevitable because of the strong evidence of the illicit sale of driving licences to people who had never set foot in a driving school, or taken a driving test.
Gemo said the fact that the detentions occurred in the wake of a major traffic accident at Maluana, in Maputo province, in which 32 people lost their lives, was merely a coincidence.
“This case has been under investigation for the past two years”, she explained. “It was sparked off by anonymous whistle blowers, and by a study undertaken by the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP). The case went through various stages of investigation, and this week the team of prosecutors and criminal investigators decided the time had come to detain those implicated”.
She added that corruption in bodies such as INATTER/INATRO has catastrophic results, and so the offenders should not go unpunished. The recent spate of road accidents “shows how much corruption can have negative effects. This case concerns the sale of driving licences to people who have not learnt how to drive. Some of these people show up driving public transport vehicles, putting lives in danger”.
Meanwhile, at the Vilankulo district prison in the southern province of Inhambane four members of staff were detained last week on suspicion of corruption, according to a report in the independent daily “O Pais”.
The four are the director of the prison and three prison guards, accused of accepting a bribe to release a South African citizen who was serving a four year jail sentence for drug trafficking.
However, the Inhambane provincial office for the fight against corruption said it could not confirm this case. But it told the paper that other prison staff, in Morrumbene district, are under arrest, also on corruption charges.
