Mozambique recovered more than 27 billion meticais in assets over five years

Mozambique has recovered assets valued at more than 27 billion meticais (€362 million) since 2020, the Central Asset Recovery Office (GCRA) announced on Monday, while warning of “persistent challenges” in combating economic crimes. “Since its creation and within the scope of patrimonial and financial investigation processes, the Central Asset Recovery Office has identified a total of 27,185,894,667.44 meticais (€362,699,833.15) in incongruent assets,” said GCRA director Ana Sheila Marrengula during the national GCRA meeting in Maputo. This amount, accumulated since 2020, serves as a reminder that there are “citizens in society who display levels of wealth manifestly incompatible with their declared lawful income,” she stated.

“During its existence, the Central Asset Recovery Office has evolved both institutionally and in procedural performance, growing from nine staff members in its initial phase to 50 in 2025, with increasing demand for its involvement in patrimonial and financial investigations,” Marrengula added. The director also noted a rise in the number of completed cases as a result of greater capacity and, consequently, “more incongruent assets identified.” “Despite these advances, important challenges persist, such as the need to strengthen the budget to open Provincial Asset Recovery Offices in order to make patrimonial investigations more effective,” warned the director. Internally, Marrengula pointed to difficulties related to reliance on requisitions to collect essential data and limited access to modern patrimonial investigation technologies and financial and digital data analysis, as well as the need to increase the number of permanent members or entities within the office.

Externally, she highlighted, among other issues, delays in data provision, the predominance of fragmented physical databases and fragile public and private registries, the dominance of cash transactions and the weight of the informal economy, the use of “opaque jurisdictions” and the growing use of crypto-assets. Mozambique’s Attorney General, Américo Letela, said on the occasion that the fight against organised crime, corruption, money laundering and terrorism financing must be accompanied by effective asset recovery mechanisms. “International experience has shown that investigating, charging and convicting are not enough. It is necessary to remove from criminals the economic benefits that fuel their activities,” stated the Attorney General.