The Bank of Mozambique announced today that it has fined nine credit institutions and financial companies for violating prudential rules to prevent and combat money laundering and terrorist financing in 2024.
In a statement, the Mozambican central bank said it had also sanctioned the nine institutions for violating foreign exchange rules and consumer protection rules for financial products and services, with the fines being applied to violations for the period between December 2023 and December 2024.
Among those fined is Banco Comercial de Investimentos (BCI), part of the Caixa Geral de Depósitos group, with a fine of around 43 million meticals (648,000 euros) and the M-Mola mobile wallet, with a fine of around 45 million meticals (678,000 euros).
Multicâmbios Lda was fined around 1.2 million meticals (18 thousand euros), Banco Letsego, SA was sanctioned just over 1.4 million meticals (21 thousand euros) and Banco Société Générale Moçambique must pay just over 1.7 million meticals (25 thousand euros).
Absa Bank Moçambique will have to pay close to four million meticals (60 thousand euros), Moza Banco, First National Bank, SA and Ecobank Moçambique will each have to pay 900 thousand meticals (13 thousand euros) in fines.
In March 2024, Lusa reported that Mozambique had fined the country’s banks 124.8 million meticals (1.8 million euros) since 2020 for breaches of money laundering and counter-terrorism legislation, according to a government report.
‘In general, our assessment shows that the administrative sanctions applied are sufficiently proportionate and dissuasive, also as a result of the revision of the Credit Institutions and Financial Companies Law, which further increased the fines provided for,’ reads the Report on the National Assessment of Terrorist Financing Risks.
Mozambican banking consumers filed 979 complaints in the first half of the year, more than half of which related to the country’s two largest banking institutions, both controlled by Portuguese banks and the only ones with more than one million customers.
According to the Banco de Moçambique report, to which Lusa had access on 03 December 2024, of the total complaints received from January to June, Millennium BIM accounted for 359, with a complaint rate of 17.6, and Banco Comercial de Investimentos, of the Caixa Geral de Depósitos group, 269, with a rate of 11.5%.
In the list of banks with 200,000 to one million customers, Absa Moçambique totalled 58 complaints (index 25.3), Moza Banco 40 (15.4) and Standard Bank 37 (7.9).
According to the same report, around 45 per cent of the total complaints submitted in this period were about the operation of ATM machines, namely money not being made available and debited from the account, almost 18 per cent about credit operations and 15.3 per cent about bank accounts, with undue debits and blockages.
Lusa
