A timber licence bears a missing man’s name, exposing Mozambique’s forest agency to criminal scrutiny.
By Foreign Correspondent
In Nhamapaza, a settlement in Sofala Province along the corridor linking Mozambique’s interior to the port city of Beira, a Portuguese national named Américo António Melro Sebastião was allegedly abducted on 29 July 2016 by uniformed agents.
His case was transmitted to the Mozambican government under the urgent action procedure of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, records show.
By 2021, the Working Group noted it “regrets the absence of information on any investigation” into his case. No confirmed resolution has since emerged.
Documents under review indicate that in 2024, a company called Inther-Beira was registered in Mozambique, listing Sebastião as a partner.
Under Mozambican law, company registration requires a valid passport copy, proof of residency or corporate registration compliance, and signed documentation from all partners.
The same verification framework governs timber export licences.
The central question is precise: by what process was a man reported missing since 2016, with no confirmed presence in the country, no known valid passport, and no verified residency, enrolled as a legal partner in a company seeking an export licence from the state body charged with policing Mozambique’s forests?
That body is the Direcção Nacional de Florestas e Fauna Bravia.
At the centre of questions about Inther-Beira’s licence is Imede Chafim Falume, who served as its director from approximately 2020 to 2022 and was reappointed in May 2025 by Minister Roberto Mito Albino.
Documents reviewed by the Mozambican weekly Savana show that during his earlier tenure, Falume personally signed Authorization No. 2065, allowing timber transport without payment of mandatory cutting fees, in violation of forestry regulations and state revenue protocols.
The same reporting shows that Falume’s cousin, Yssene Idrisse, operates a registered sole-trader timber company (NUIT 102800532) that received multiple unauthorized quota increases approved by Falume, enabling extraction well above legal limits.
Falume’s three children together hold 70 percent of the shares in Sunnat Logistics, a Maputo-registered company providing cargo transport, customs clearance, and warehousing services, according to company filings published in the Boletim da República on 16 August 2024.
Evidências reported that during the same 2020-2022 term, Falume also arrogated to himself powers reserved exclusively for the Council of Ministers under Lei 14/2016 of 30 December: the authority to set timber quotas by species per province.
His 2022 note increasing quotas for Niassa Province violated that law.
The licensing process that appears to have admitted Inther-Beira into the system presents multiple procedural failures: no valid passport, no confirmed residency, and no signed documentation from a named foreign partner whose whereabouts have been unknown since 2016.
The DNFFB is not the only institution under scrutiny.
A formal criminal complaint filed with Mozambique’s attorney general and reviewed by our correspondent alleges that approximately 450 containers of prohibited timber left the Port of Pemba in Cabo Delgado Province with forged or incomplete documentation.
Cross-referencing bills of lading and shipping manifests against official exit authorisations, the complaint found that only 44 containers met legal standards.
The remaining 406 shipped without valid customs declarations, full tax receipts, or properly issued authorisations. The estimated loss to the state: 200 million meticais, roughly $3.1 million in taxes, duties, and forestry fees.
The complaint names three senior government officials as presumed offenders: Minister Albino, Director Falume, and Stélio Gonçalves, director of investigation at the Tax Authority, along with two private companies, Romaca Unipessoal Lda and S&M Serviços Lda, and customs broker Custódio Alfredo.
This is not the first time Falume’s name has been attached to missing containers.
Under his earlier directorship, Evidências reported, more than 76 containers of seized timber vanished from government custody at Pemba. Cabo Delgado’s then-chief prosecutor charged multiple public officials in 2021.
No senior official was prosecuted.
The timber at issue comes largely from Cabo Delgado Province, where the insurgency linked to al-Shabaab has destabilised the north since 2017.
A Mozambican government risk assessment on terrorism financing, seen by the BBC, found that insurgents have used the illicit timber trade to generate an estimated $1.9 million per month.
EIA sources described firms paying a ten-percent protection fee to armed groups to log in their territory.
From 2017 to 2023, over 89 percent of timber exports from Mozambique to China by weight, 3.7 million tons valued at $1.3 billion, were shipped in breach of the log export ban.
In May 2025, Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture provided no public clarification on Falume’s reappointment and launched no independent inquiry into the documented irregularities of his previous tenure, according to Savana.
Minister Albino, who signed the reappointment order and is named in the criminal complaint, was separately charged by the Sofala Provincial Court in September 2025 with ordering illegal timber extraction in Chemba district.
He held a provisional land use right but no logging licence, CIJM reporting shows. Charges carry a potential sentence of twelve to sixteen years.
No public response was found in the cited record from Albino, Falume, or Gonçalves regarding the Pemba complaint. No public response was found in the cited record from any Mozambican authority regarding Inther-Beira’s registration or the identity of its named partner.
Mozambique holds the world’s largest stock of pau-preto (African blackwood), listed on CITES Appendix II since 2017 and coveted in Asia and Europe.
In July 2025, CITES representatives warned that Mozambique could face a ban from international trade in endangered forest species unless it demonstrates enforceable progress on traceability.
No valid non-detriment finding, a scientific study required before CITES-listed species can be exported, has been completed for Mozambican pau-preto, making every shipment a potential treaty violation.
The World Bank has committed up to $50 million to Mozambique under its Forest Carbon Partnership Facility for emissions reductions linked to sustainable forest management, FAO records show.
That investment rests on institutions whose leadership is currently named in active criminal proceedings.
In March 2026, Falume told reporters that a planned digital export control system would “significantly resolve” data disparities and smuggling, without providing a launch date. He was speaking at the first convening of the directorate under his renewed leadership.
Four days later, the Public Prosecutor’s Office announced a criminal investigation into the disappearance of 400 containers from the very port his agency is responsible for policing.
“These are resources protected by legislation and policy so that they can benefit the people of Mozambique,” a Cabo Delgado official told EIA investigators. “All these schemes are cheating the country.”
