According to a study released today, Sunday (04), by the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), a Mozambican non-governmental organization (NGO), Zohra Group, a business group suspected of being involved in money laundering, and whose premises were recently raided by the Public Prosecutor's Office, has won millions of meticais in contracts to supply goods and services to public entities in Tete province, in the center of the country, over the last four years.

In a document published on its website, the NGO reveals that the Tete State Representation services and the Tete Municipal Council were Zohra Holding's main clients.

"In the last four years (2019-2023) the holding company, called Zohra Group, SA, has collected more than 300 million meticais in contracts from public entities in Tete province alone. Zuneid Esmael Amad Abdul Satar is the majority/sole shareholder of Zohra Group and Paulo Auade, the former governor of the province, is the company's administrator," the analysis says, noting that the holding company was formally set up in 2016, and until 2019, it was a company of little significance.

Further on, the publication points out that until 2019, the group had modest facilities located in the Samora Machel neighborhood, in the city of Tete, and its main activity was car repair. However, "the holding company began to register gigantic growth, through the supply of vehicles and vehicle rental and repair services for the state, and from then on it expanded its facilities in Tete and to other provincial capitals, namely Pemba and Beira; and extended investments to the mining, real estate and fuel sales sectors, among others.

"The reasons behind this rapid rise remain hidden from the public. However, documents consulted during the research reveal that shortly before registering this meteoric growth, the holding company associated itself with politically exposed figures and, in that same period, injected capital estimated at 320 million meticais, the origin of which could not be traced," emphasizes CIP, maintaining that documents also show that, since then, the business group has positioned itself as one of the largest suppliers to the state in Tete province, benefiting from preferential treatment in tenders from public companies and other state entities, especially the Provincial State Representation Services and the Tete Municipal Authority.

These institutions, according to CIP, "each spent close to 100 million meticais on contracts for the business group between 2020 and 2023".

For the CIP, the lack of effective public scrutiny of the actual beneficiaries of commercial companies doing business with the state may have created the conditions for politically exposed people associated with the business group suspected of money laundering to abuse their influence to gain advantages in public contracts and carry out a series of questionable deals without leaving any trace of their involvement.

The group is suspected of involvement in money laundering schemes, and on 7 June 2024, the company's offices in Tete were the target of searches and seizures by SERNIC agents and officials from the Attorney General's Office, as part of Operation Stop Money Laundering, carried out by the Central Office for Combating Organized and Transnational Crime. The company's registered partner, Zuneid Satar, was arrested on the occasion, joining a list of seven businessmen already implicated in the operation.

(Photo DR)