According to a report in Saturday’s issue of the Maputo daily “Noticias”, Fernandes replaced Manuel with Salomao Catine, who had previously been Nacala district director of customs. Bartolomeu Bachir becomes the new district director.
The head of operations in Nampula, Albertina Ussene, was also sacked and replaced by the former head of investigation, Anselmo Fumo.
Manuel and Ussene are not accused of any direct or indirect involvement in the fraudulent timber operation, but Fernandes argued that they must bear responsibility since they have the final say in all exports and imports via Nacala.
The timber fraud was discovered in July and involved 561 containers holding more than 7,900 cubic metres of woods of various kinds, including precious hardwoods which cannot legally be exported as unprocessed logs.
Eight companies (Casa Bonita, Zhen Long, Mozambique Trading, Yihou, Tong Fa, Chanate, Senyu and Verdura), several of which are owned by Chinese citizens, were involved in the fraud, and are accused of making false declarations about the quantity and quality of the wood they intended to export.
The AT’s investigation found that they only declared a little more than 5,000 cubic metres of wood, and claimed it had an FOB value of 10.4 million meticais (about 385,000 US dollars). But the AT calculated the real value of the wood at more than four times this amount – 43.86 million meticais.
Post published in: Africa News