The Institute for Multi-Party Democracy (IMD) says it is concerned about the impact of the measures that the Mozambican government intends to take, in the context of the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing, with a view to leaving the “grey list” of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).
The executive director Hermenegildo Mundlovu voiced this concern, fearing that by controlling the circulation of money and the origin and destination of funds of civil society organisations, the state could jeopardise citizens’ freedoms.
Mundlovu said that some of the reforms that will be necessary, mainly in the justice sector, “will put in jeopardy some individual freedoms, we think that it is a double-edged sword”.
However, Paulo Mungumbe, director of Legal Services, Studies and Cooperation, at the Mozambique Financial Intelligence Office (GAFI), under the Ministry of Economy and Finance, assured that the state will protect civil society organisations because the sources and sectors vulnerable to money laundering and financing of terrorism have already been identified.
“Among those sources are corruption, drug and human trafficking, smuggling of precious metals and stones, kidnappings and private prisons,” Mungumbe told VOA.
Meanwhile, Borges Namirre, who is following this process at the Centre for Public Integrity (CIP), said that the government had not made much progress in this aspect because there is no law regulating the organisation and functioning of non-profit organisations.
For this CIP researcher, Mozambican non-governmental organisations are regulated by a law, international organisations by a decree and religious denominations also have their own law, so he defends the existence of a single law and a single regulatory body for all organisations, including those that are not-for-profit, so that their accounts can be controlled.
It should be noted that the Mozambican Government, through the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), submitted last Friday, 17 March, its first assessment report to the FATF, as part of the initiatives that the country is undertaking to get out of the “grey list”.
Diário Económico
