FMA Exposes Internal Sabotage and Money Diversion in LAM Ticket Sales by João Pó's Management
The director of Fly Modern Ark (FMA), a company hired by the government to restructure Mozambique Airlines (LAM), has exposed a scheme of money diversion in ticket sales shops through automatic payment terminal (TPA/POS) machines that do not belong to the company.
The firm reports that in some instances, the payments made for ticket purchases are deposited into unfamiliar accounts.
"We conducted a swift operation with LAM's internal security to collect all the POS machines, and from the 20 LAM ticket sales points, we gathered 81 POS machines by Sunday. There are some stores where even the store managers do not recognize the machines and claim not to know to whom they belong," stated Sérgio Matos, in a press conference held yesterday in Maputo.
The audit began nearly two weeks ago when the company noticed that despite an increase in ticket sales, the financial returns were significantly lower than expected.
"Sales are happening, but the company is not receiving all the money. Over the last three months of evaluations, we observed that the discrepancy was in the order of between two million dollars and three million dollars. Just in December, we have a deficit of 3.2 million dollars," he said.
Matos also highlighted suspicious cases even in the collection of cash at stores.
"The cash collection is done by security companies... When we inquired at the LAM sales points about how and when they receive it, we found out that sometimes the deposit is made three days later, which means that money is collected from the company and then stored somewhere for two, three days before the borderô (a document showing credits and debits of an operation) is received," Matos explained.
FMA also denounces internal sabotage orchestrated by LAM's management led by João Pó Jorge, which aims to prevent FMA from achieving its objectives, specifically to rescue the airline from bankruptcy and stabilize its finances.
