
Maputo, 20 Sep (AIM) – Mozambique’s National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) has detained a lawyer for allegedly being involved in money laundering in the central city of Beira.
According to Alfeu Sitoe, the SERNIC spokesperson in Sofala, speaking on Thursday to reporters, the lawyer (whose name has not yet been released) was arrested on Wednesday as part of ongoing investigations into Chinese nationals for alleged illegal logging.
The lawyer was responsible for defending one of the Chinese citizens being investigated, who owns a timber yard and was arrested last week on suspicion of illegal logging.
One of the Chinese individuals involved in this case is the target of an international arrest warrant issued, at the request of the Mozambican authorities, for having associated himself with another Chinese citizen, now on the run, to illegally exploit forest resources in Manica and Sofala provinces in 2021. In that year, the authorities seized illegally logged timber that was being stored in a yard, the documents for which were in the Chinese citizen’s name.
“The individuals set up around 18 companies, some of which operated without declaring their income to the authorities for tax collection”, Sitoe said.
It is also suspected that the illegal trade in timber is one of the ways through which the terrorist groups in the northern province of Cabo Delgado are financed.
(AIM)
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