Corruption Risk Diagnosis in Mozambique

The cooperation project to support the fight against corruption in Mozambique, jointly financed by the EU and the Spanish Agency for Development Cooperation (AECID) and managed by the latter in collaboration with FIIAPP, completed its first mission to Maputo, the national capital and the site of its headquarters for the next three years.   The mission made a diagnosis of the Mozambican legal system in the fight against corruption to assess the risk. The diagnosis included consideration of the gender perspective .  

This work was carried out based on the GRECO methodology, a standardised European mechanism for judicial systems of the Member States. The main project task was to design a questionnaire adapted to the Mozambican judicial context under GRECO standards. To do this, meetings were held with more than twenty institutions and approximately 100 people were interviewed. Among the Mozambican institutions participating in this initiative were the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic; the Supreme Court; the Central Cabinet for Combating Corruption; the Ministry of Justice, Constitutional and Religious Affairs and the Mozambican Association of Judges. 

The team that worked on the diagnosis in Mozambique included public sector specialists from Spain and Portugal. On the Spanish side, an assistant prosecutor from the Anti-Corruption and Organised Crime Prosecutor’s Office of the General Prosecutor’s Office of the State of Spain and a magistrate attached to the General Council of the Judicial Power of Spain (CGPJ) took part. On the Portuguese side, there were two judicial magistrates from the Appeal Court of Second Instance of the Superior Council of the Judiciary of Portugal. 

This is an innovative and pioneering process in the judicial context of Mozambique and Africa. It is an example of the work done by FIIAPP to assist in processes that improve public policy by sharing expertise with other countries and geographic areas. The knowledge of Spanish and European public administrations with public technical cooperation as a development instrument is essential to achieve this.