An investigation carried out by the Center for Public Integrity, (CIP) in partnership with Mídia Lab, (ML) concluded that in 2021, around 30 consultants hired by the FNDS to provide services under the SUSTENTA program, evaded approximately 17 million Meticais in taxes.

According to the CIP document consulted by MZNews, the consultants were hired by the FNDS to provide services in various areas such as procurement, communication, infrastructure, knowledge transfer, finance, land and the environment.

The consultants' annual fees for this period range from 42,000 to 90,000 US dollars, equivalent to between 2.7 and 5.8 million meticais.

For example, Isménio Chitata, a consultant hired as Sustenta's chief operating officer, received 5.8 million meticais in fees. Adamo Yossuf, another consultant hired as a communications specialist, earned 4.7 million Meticais in fees in the same period.

"However, far from the spotlight and triumphalist rhetoric, Sustenta's managers have been responsible for embezzling millions of dollars from the program's funds, without any accountability, clearly damaging public resources," reads the organization's document.

The organization claims that the embezzlement was made possible by under-reporting the amount of taxes required by law for the type of services provided by the consultants.

"They claimed that their fees came from small-scale activities, whose annual turnover, by volume, should be equal to or less than 2.5 million meticais, subject to a rate of 3% Small Taxpayers Tax (ISPC), in accordance with the law. However, documents consulted show that the fees paid to consultants range from 2.7 to 5.8 million meticais a year, above the maximum established by the ISPC Law."

According to the NGO's calculations, the consultants should have paid the Personal Income Tax (IRPS) corresponding to 20% of their annual income. In fact, this is the law.

Going into detail, the CIP says that Sustenta's chief operating officer, for example, should have paid 1.1 million meticais, yet he only paid 176,000 meticais. He therefore avoided paying more than 1 million meticais in taxes.

The same goes for the communications specialist who should have paid taxes of 942,000 meticais, but only deducted 141,000 meticais from his fees, depriving the state of more than 800,000 meticais in revenue.

Banks also grabbed 1.2 billion Meticais in the "ride" of SUSTENTA

The SUSTENTA project was conceived by the Mozambican government and aims to transform the rural economy. It is financed by the World Bank.

However, despite the fact that the agreement did not provide for the participation of commercial banks or payments to tourism companies, the CIP investigation concluded that some commercial banks also benefited illicitly from the money allocated to SUSTENTA. These are Moza Banco, Millennium BIM and Banco Nacional de Investimento (BNI).

"This section shows how the SUSTENTA project, ostensibly designed to stimulate the rural economy, served to drain funds to unrelated entities and individuals in the period from 2019 to 2020," notes CIP.

In the case of BNI, the CIP states that this financial institution received around 94.9 million Meticais that were allegedly to be used to finance the business plans of the Small Emerging Commercial Farmers (PACEs). However, an audit by the Administrative Court, carried out in 2020, found that BNI never actually transferred the amount to the PACEs.

"The transfers to the PACEs were all made by the Bank of Mozambique. In 2020, the Administrative Court asked the FNDS for a nominal list of the PACEs that would have received funding via

transfers from BNI. However, the list provided by the entity did not include any transfers made by BNI to the PACEs in 2019," the document reads.

The CIP also notes that even after the Administrative Court found cases of undue transfers of amounts to commercial banks by the FNDS in 2019, contrary to the financing agreement signed with the World Bank, the entity made similar transfers again in 2020 to other commercial banks. According to the Administrative Court, these irregularities indicate "serious control deficiencies" in the management of Sustenta program funds.

For its part, and in the wake of SUSTENTA, Moza Banco won a contract worth 1.1 billion Meticais so that it would be responsible for financing the business plans of the PACEs, even though this was illegal.

The NGO we have been quoting also says that the SUSTENTA project envisaged repayment of the funding through Banco Millennium BIM (BIM) in order to guarantee the continuity of the project.

However, according to the Administrative Court, the money received from the reimbursements never reached the Public Treasury, which demonstrates "the ineffectiveness of the refinancing plan with the reimbursement amounts".