The Tax Authority (AT) intends to recover around 239.27 million dollars in taxes from the 2014 sale of Rio Tinto's mining assets in Tete province to the Indian company International Coal Venture (ICV).

A total of 50 million dollars was declared for the transaction, and the AT believes that this was only for Rio Tinto to evade taxes on the deal. The State says that this is a figure that does not correspond to the real one and is derisory in relation to the respective assets on the international market.

Quoted by NewsThe Coordinator of the Extractive Industry Taxation Unit, Aníbal Mbalango, said that in the transaction there were impairment losses that were not recognized by the technical team, "since they were not subject to prior approval by the Tax Administration", in accordance with the Corporate Income Tax Code.

The impairments were calculated on a subjective basis, since an opinion from an independent entity is not presented, as well as the business feasibility study, the business plan and the actual reserves initially discovered.

Mozambique's interest in recovering the taxes has to do with a recent agreement between Rio Tinto and a US court to pay 28 million dollars for the dismissal of a case of fraud in the investment of coal in Tete, says the newspaper.

The tax authorities have already held meetings with the managers of the Rio Tinto Group in Mozambique, but there has been no consensus due to a lack of cooperation.

The AT is also working on another case concerning the sale of Riversdale to Rio Tinto for 3.9 billion dollars in 2011, in which capital gains taxes were evaded​ valued at 8.6 billion meticais.