Restructuring Mozambique Airlines accuses of wasting money in ticket sales

The director of restructuring of Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique (LAM) this Monday denounced a scheme to steal money from ticket shops through automatic payment terminals (TPA/POS) that do not belong to the company.

“We quickly worked with LAM’s internal security team to collect all the POS terminals, and from LAM’s 20 ticketing outlets, we had collected 81 POS terminals by Sunday. In some stores, store managers themselves don’t recognize the machines and say that they don’t even know who they belong to,” Sergio Matos said at a press conference in Maputo.

The review began almost two weeks ago when the company realized that although the number of tickets sold was increasing, bills were still far from expected.

“It’s for sale, but the company doesn’t have all the money and in the last three months of valuations we saw that the difference we had was around two million dollars (1.8 million euros) and three million dollars (2.7 million euros) . million euros). In December alone we have a deficit of $3.2 million (2.9 million euros),” he said.

Sergio Matus also said that the inspection recorded suspicious cases even when collecting cash in stores.

“Cash collection is carried out by security companies (…). When we tried to find out at LAM points of sale how this is done and when they receive it, it turned out that sometimes the deposit is made after three days, which means that the money is taken from the company, and then the money is stored somewhere for two, three days, and after that comes the “bordero” (a document showing the credit and debit of the transaction), said Sergio Matos.

The inspection also revealed deviations in the fuel supply to the aircraft.

“If an airplane has a maximum fuel capacity of about 80 thousand liters, we call it 80 tons. [nos documentos] the same plane is refueled with 95 tons. So the question is where the remaining 15 tons will go,” he asked.

In addition to these anomalies, LAM’s chief restructuring officer reported the discovery of an account in Malawi for $1.2 million (€1.1 million) that no one in the company had access to.

“No one knows how to move or withdraw this value,” said Serio Matos, who also reported cases in which employees “used or used company funds to buy their own homes.”

LAM’s restructuring director admits to the existence of a multi-year debt to the public company Petromoc in the amount of approximately 70 million dollars (64.9 million euros), and in the last 45 days alone a debt of 300 million dollars (4.3 million euros) was recorded from the same gas station as a result of the operation to return to the European space (Maputo-Lisbon).

“From December to now, we have debts only to Petromoc and we have no debts to any other gas company,” the responsible person emphasized in response to news published in the local press about the delay of the company’s flights on Sunday due to debts.c gas stations.

“The problem was not due to lack of payment (…), but due to the lack of fuel from the supplier,” emphasized Sergio Matos, adding that the company’s only debt (to Petromoc) has already begun to be repaid. .

LAM is in the midst of a revival: it has been run by South African company Fly Modern Ark (FMA) since April last year and is currently implementing a restructuring plan.

The company’s turnaround strategy takes into account years of operational problems associated with a small fleet and lack of investment, as well as several non-fatal incidents that experts attribute to poor aircraft maintenance.

LAM’s flight network spans 12 destinations domestically, regionally it regularly flies to Johannesburg, Dar es Salaam, Harare, Lusaka and Cape Town, with Lisbon becoming its only intercontinental destination from 12 December.

LAM operates more than 40 flights daily, operated by its fleet of one Boeing 737, three Q400s, two Bombardier CRJ 900s and two Embraer 145s operated by its subsidiary Moçambique Expresso (MEX).