More than 300,000 meticais in counterfeit notes seized by the Gurué District Prosecutor's Office in Zambezia province have disappeared from the institution. Two citizens have been arrested in connection with the case: one is an employee of the justice agency and the other is the alleged coordinator of the theft.

The counterfeit notes had been in the possession of the district attorney's office since last year for investigations into a case of counterfeiting the national currency.

The official from the prosecutor's office allegedly made several purchases at the local market using the banknotes in question, said Sidney Lonzo, spokesman for the Mozambique Republic Police in Zambézia, quoted by the Radio Mozambique.

"This money was held by the police, and the case was forwarded to the prosecutor's office. One of the employees responsible for guarding this money, in the dead of night, together with his friend, using keys, went to the building of the Gurué district prosecutor's office. They began to make inadvertent purchases in the district's markets and bars, which led to some suspicion. When we traced them, we realized that they were paying for these expenses using those counterfeit notes," he said.

Another case involves the arrest of an employee who vandalized an automatic teller machine (ATM) in the city of Quelimane. The accused said that the machine was having problems: if he took out money, it wouldn't take out his card, and vice versa. So he forced the ATM to remove his card using a screwdriver.

The PRM said that this is a citizen who already has a criminal record and has been systematically referred to PRM units "because he shows aggressive behavior towards people in his family".