Former Mozambique President Joaquim Chissano has learned that he has won a large cash prize, but he has refused to collect it, because he fears it may be a scam.
Mrs Chissano said:
"We were sitting quietly in our drawing room enjoying tea and cakes, when suddenly the phone rang and a foreign voice said that my husband had won a large cash prize in Europe. The caller, who had an unpronounceable name that sounded like Jim or Tim or Kim, said that he needed my husband's bank account number and sort code in order to wire the money. Also, my husband had to turn up at a reception is Oslo, which is miles away from here."
Former President Chissano added:
"We've all heard of these money scams from Europe, where some con artist rings up a decent African homeowner, pretends that they have won a prize and asks for bank details. Unfortunately, they use these to loot the account. We all know someone who has been taken in by this fraud. Well, I'm not stupid."
We spoke to the so-called prize company, which goes by the name of No-bell, and claims to have a long history of giving prizes to world leaders. A man with a suspiciously fake Scandinavian accent told us:
"We're completely legit, sir. Former prizewinners include famous people like Anwar Sadat, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat."
As we hadn't heard of any of these people, we got our daughter to look them up on the Internet at her primary school. She told us, confirming our fears:
"These are all dead people."
We tried interviewing someone at the No-bell Prize Company in Oslo but they wouldn't take our calls. Instead, they put out a press release saying that they would be giving the prize to President Mugabe of Zimbabwe instead.
In the meantime, if someone with a Scandinavian accent phones you to say you have won the No-bell Prize, we recommend that you put the phone down.
