Fly Modern Ark (FMA) denounced, this Monday (12) in Maputo, millionaire embezzlement schemes at Mozambique Airlines (LAM), through points of sale (POS); cash collection, over-invoicing; and misuse of money.

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It was during a press conference that the FMA's Project Manager, Sérgio Matos, revealed the scams that have been damaging the national flag carrier for years for unclear purposes, including personal ones.

He said that there is money coming into the company, but the overall amount is not reflected in LAM's accounts.

"We started some operations a couple of weeks ago because of the detour of money that isn't entering the company's accounts, to find out where the money is going. It's being sold, but the company isn't getting all the money. And in the last three months, from the valuations we've been doing, the difference we were getting was in the order of two to three million dollars. In December alone we had a deficit of 3,200,000 dollars," he revealed.

This inconsistency led to "lightning investigations" which uncovered the use of points of sale (POS) in the names of third parties, through which customers paid for LAM's services.

"We decided to do some tracing to figure out what's going on. We did a lightning job with LAM's internal security to collect almost all the POS. And of LAM's 20 ticket sales points, we had collected 81 POS by yesterday [Sunday]. And there are some stores where the bosses themselves don't know where the POS belongs," he said.

According to project manager FMA, the company contracted to restructure LAM's debts, some of the POS homes that received the payments are outside Maputo city.

"Before we [FMA] were here, it happened that some POS were in the names of bottle stores that are in Xai-xai, Beira, etc., paying from here [Maputo], but that wasn't in our time," he said.

He said that work will be carried out with each bank, namely the analysis of each POS, to find out what is going on, because, as yet, it has not been possible to identify the people behind the scam.

Another sign of embezzlement is the deposit of cash into LAM's bank accounts, which takes place three days after it has been collected from the institution's points of sale.

"The collection of money in cash (in kind/physical) is done by the security companies at the LAM points of sale. And when we try to find out from these security companies how it is done and when they receive the borders [We see that the deposits are made three days later. This means that money is collected at the company and then kept somewhere for two or three days, and after that comes the border" he clarified.

On the other hand, there is either over-invoicing, detour of funds or even fuel at LAM, as there are requests to supply aircraft beyond their capacity.

"Even when it comes to refueling, we're noticing that some of them are over capacity. If an aircraft has a maximum fuel capacity of around 80,000 liters (tons), it is filled with 95 tons (1,000 liters). The question is, where are the 15 tons (one thousand liters) going?" asked Matos.

On the other hand, the FMA's operations have shown that LAM officials used the company's money for their own benefit.

"We have the situation of some LAM employees who use or have used company funds to buy their own homes. And these employees, when contacted, are each trying to come up with a justification," he revealed.

The FMA, which has already led LAM to resume some routes, is reopening the Mozambique-Malawi route. And in the process, it discovered a LAM account with more than a million dollars in it.

"About three weeks ago, because we were about to open the Malawi route, we discovered that there was an account there with 1,200,000 dollars and that no one knew how to move this money," he revealed.

Asked whether the FMA will continue to work on the restructuring of LAM, given that the contract ends next April, and in this environment of sabotage, Matos said that the focus now is on finding the reasons for the differential between passenger numbers and the real figures in LAM's accounts.

"We're still worried, in this period, about how it is that with the increase in passengers we're having the figures aren't reflected in the bank accounts. If we add up the accounts, the figure isn't there", he stressed.