Maputo, Feb. 7, 2025 (Lusa) - The Bank of Mozambique has imposed fines on nine credit institutions and financial companies for violating prudential rules to prevent and combat money laundering and terrorist financing in 2024.
In a statement released late on Thurday, the central bank said it had also fined the nine institutions for violating foreign exchange rules and consumer protection rules for financial products and services, in cases relating to the period between December 2023 and December 2024.
Among those affected is Banco Comercial de Investimentos (BCI), part of the Caixa Geral de Depósitos group, with a fine of around 43 million meticais (€648,000) and the M-Mola mobile wallet, with a fine of around 45 million meticais (€678,000).
Multicâmbios Lda was fined around 1.2 million meticais (€18,000), Banco Letsego, SA just over 1.4 million meticais (€21,000) and Banco Société Générale Moçambique just over 1.7 million meticais (€25,000 euros).
Absa Bank Moçambique is expected to pay nearly 4 million meticais (€60,000), while Moza Banco, First National Bank, SA and Ecobank Moçambique are each expected to pay 900,000 meticais (€13,000) in fines.
In March 2024, Lusa reported that the authorities in Mozambique had imposed fines of 124.8 million meticais (€1.8 million) on the country's banks since 2020 for breaches of legislation on money laundering and combating terrorism, 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 Law on Credit Institutions and Financial Companies, 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 last year, more than half of which related to the country's two largest financial institutions, both controlled by Portuguese banks and the only ones with more than one million customers.
According to the Bank of Mozambique report, to which Lusa had access on 3 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 between 200,000 and 1 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% of the total number of complaints submitted in this period were about the operation of automatic teller machines, namely money not being made available but still debited from the account; almost 18% were about credit operations and 15.3% about bank accounts, with undue debits and blockages.
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