FORMER INTERIOR MINISTER ARRESTED

Maputo, 22 Sept (AIM) – Police on Monday detained Mozambique’s former Interior Minister, Almerino Manhenje, according to a source in the Attorney-General’s Office.

Manhenje was arrested, on the orders of the Maputo City Attorney’s office, as he was giving a class at Maputo’s Higher Institute of International Relations (ISRI) where he is a lecturer. He was taken to the Maputo Civil Prison.

Manhenje was detained in connection with the disappearance of large sums of money from the Interior Ministry when he was at its head. He held the job between November 1996 and January 2005.

In December 2005, Manhenje’s successor, Jose Pacheco, told reporters that an audit of the Ministry revealed that 220 billion old meticais (about 8.8 million US dollars) could not be accounted for.

Pacheco said that the auditors decided to make a thorough check on the Ministry’s assets and its entire staff. The auditors checked the physical existence of the people drawing wages from the Ministry, and discovered that there were 55 “ghost workers” – people who had died, or who had never existed in the first place, but whose wages were collected every month.

A further eight people have been arrested alongside Manhenje, including former financial directors of the Interior Ministry and of the riot police. AIM has not yet been able to obtain further details abut these suspects.
(AIM)