“AT AN ADVANCED STAGE”

Mozambique’s Central Office for the Fight Against Corruption (GCCC) on Tuesday announced that it has requested from Brazil the documents concerning the bribe paid by the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer in 2009 to Mozambican officials to secure the purchase of Embraer aircraft by Mozambique Airlines (LAM).

The spokesperson for the GCCC, Eduardo Sumana, told reporters “we should mention that the facts in question occurred in four countries, Right now we are at an advanced stage and the countries have responded positively to our requests”.The four countries concerned must be Brazil and the United States, where Embraer confessed to paying bribes and was fined 225 million US dollars, Sao Tome and Principe, where a shell company was set up to handle the bribe, and Portugal where this company had an account where the money was paid.According to the documents from the Brazilian Federal Prosecutor’s office, the bribe was demanded by the then chairperson of the LAM board, Jose Viegas, and Mateus Zimba, then the Mozambique representative of the South African petrochemical company Sasol, was the intermediary who set up the shell company, named Xihevele and registered in Sao Tome, that handled the 800,000 dollar bribe. Xihevele sent Embraer two invoices for 400,000 dollars each, and the money was paid into the Xihevele account in Portugal. From Embraer’s viewpoint the bribe appeared successful, since it resulted in LAM acquiring two Embraer-190 planes, for 32 million dollars each.Sumana said the GCCC is now investigating all the staff employed by LAM in 2008-2009, and third parties involved in the acquisition of the Embraer aircraft. 

This goes beyond the 800,000 dollar bribe paid by Embraer. Sumana said there are suspicions of criminal mismanagement of the payments made by LAM in the expansion of its fleet of aircraft. 

As for the second scandal involving a Brazilian company, Sumana said the GCCC expects to obtain from the Brazilian authorities the names of the Mozambican officials who took a bribe of 900,000 dollars from the construction company Odebrecht. “We believe that by May we will have the identities of the people involved”, he said. As in the Embraer case, it was the US authorities who first investigated Odebrecht, establishing that the company had paid bribes to guarantee contracts for over 100 projects in a dozen countries (Mozambique, Angola, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Venezuela).

The 900,000 dollar bribe paid to as yet unnamed Mozambicans, during the period of the government of President Armando Guebuza, appears to have been connected with the construction of an international airport at Nacala, on the northern coast. The conversion of the old Nacala air base into an international airport cost 200 million dollars – and appears to have been a spectacular waste, since the only airline flying to Nacala is LAM. It was hoped that Nacala would be a hub, linking southern Africa and the Middle East, but to date no international airlines have shown any interest in Nacala.The bribery scandal could break Odebrecht. The company must pay fines of at least 2.6 billion dollars. Two of the countries where Odebrect paid bribes – Peru and Panama – have put Odebrecht on a black list of companies barred from taking part in tenders, and others might follow.