MAPUTO-(MaraviPost)-Mozambique’s top prosecutor stood before the country’s criminal investigators on Wednesday and said what ordinary Mozambicans have been saying for years: the institution meant to catch criminals is itself sheltering them.
Attorney-General Americo Juliao Letela did not come to Maputo to praise the National Criminal Investigation Service.
He came to warn it, Club of Mozambique reports.
The National Criminal Investigation Service, known by its Portuguese acronym SERNIC, is Mozambique’s main criminal investigation body.
It handles murder, kidnapping, drug trafficking, money laundering and organised crime.
At the opening of SERNIC’s Coordinating Council, Letela said integrity, discipline and internal control inside SERNIC must be strengthened, because some of its own members are using the institution to protect criminals and facilitate illegal activities.
That is not an opposition accusation. That is the Attorney-General’s own assessment.
Letela’s language was careful, but the meaning was damning.
“We will not protect misconduct, tolerate the use of the institution for criminal purposes, or hesitate to take the measures provided for by law whenever the facts established justify them,” he said.
In plain language: the rot is real, and it has reached the point where the country’s chief prosecutor has to publicly threaten his own investigators with the law.
He went further saying investigators who use confidential information, state resources and knowledge gained on duty to protect suspects or obstruct investigations are not just breaking rules.
“A member who uses his position to protect criminals, facilitate illegal activities, disclose confidential information or obstruct investigations betrays not only his professional duties. He betrays the institutional mission he has undertaken on behalf of the State and society,” Letela said.
This is the core of Mozambique’s public institution crisis. The problem is not only that criminals exist. It is that criminals have insiders.
When the investigator tips off the suspect, when the file disappears, when the roadblock lets the drug truck pass, the state is not failing to fight crime. The state is helping crime win.
Kidnappings, drugs and dirty money
Letela named the crimes where SERNIC’s failure hurts most: kidnappings, drug trafficking and money laundering.
Mozambique has become a transit corridor for heroin and cocaine moving from Asia and Latin America to Europe and South Africa. Kidnappings for ransom, particularly targeting businesspeople of Asian descent in Maputo, Matola and Beira, have terrorised communities and driven investment away.
Money laundering allows the profits to be cleaned and reinvested.
Letela argued that SERNIC must do more than arrest the foot soldiers. It must identify the masterminds, the financiers and the facilitators behind the networks.
That is precisely what a compromised investigation service cannot do — because the financiers often know someone inside.
Corruption on the road is corruption that kills
The Attorney-General also turned to an area Mozambicans encounter every day: traffic enforcement.
He warned that taking bribes to overlook offences or allow unroadworthy vehicles to circulate is not a minor irregularity or a socially acceptable practice. It can contribute to accidents and put lives at risk.
This is where the rot in public institutions becomes deadly. A bribe at a checkpoint is not just a small payment. It is a broken brake, an overloaded minibus, a drunk driver waved through, and then a funeral.
Letela challenged SERNIC to strengthen coordination with the Public Prosecutor’s Office, known as the Ministerio Publico, and with traffic authorities. But coordination means little if the officers on the road are part of the problem.
More money, same excuses?
Letela acknowledged that SERNIC suffers from shortages — of material, technology, money and people.
He welcomed the government’s increase in operational funding. Then he issued a warning that sounded like an indictment of how public money is usually used.
“Operational funds should not be seen merely as additional financial support, but as an instrument placed at the disposal of criminal investigations to produce concrete, measurable and socially relevant results,” he said.
In other words: do not waste it, do not steal it, and do not come back next year asking for more while producing nothing.
He also addressed the review of the statute governing SERNIC members and the recruitment of new officers. More personnel, he said, must be accompanied by continuous training, discipline and professional integrity.
That is the sentence that exposes the whole cycle. Mozambique keeps recruiting more officers into institutions that have not cleaned the ones already inside. Numbers go up. Trust goes down.
The question Letela did not answer
The Coordinating Council is expected to produce guidelines to improve investigation capacity, strengthen coordination and increase accountability among SERNIC leaders and personnel.
But Mozambique has produced guidelines before. It has held councils before. It has made speeches before.
The question Mozambicans will ask is not what Letela said on Wednesday. It is what happens on Thursday.
How many SERNIC officers have been investigated, suspended, charged and convicted for protecting criminals? How many cases were compromised because information was leaked? How many kidnapping networks were dismantled because the insider was removed, not transferred?
Until those numbers are published, for some, Letela’s speech will read like another government public relations exercise: strong words in Maputo, same rot in the provinces.
As noted by critics in comments section, Mozambique does not need another warning that its institutions are compromised.
It needs proof that the state is willing to clean itself — starting with the people paid to investigate everyone else.
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