Mozambique: Commercial banks fined for breaching anti-money laundering legislation – AIM

Login

Register

http://www.clubofmozambique.com/

Mozambique: Commercial banks fined for breaching anti-money laundering legislation – AIM

3:17 CAT | 29 Sep 2025

File photo: Banco de Moçambique

The Bank of Mozambique, in its role as regulator of the national financial system, has fined commercial banks about 124.8 million meticais (1.9 US million dollars at the current exchange rate) for violating the country’s legislation on the prevention of money laundering.

According to the Central Bank’s Sector Risk Assessment Report (SRA) for the period between November 2023 and February 2024, there is a serious weakness in the national banking system “despite advances in the legal framework and implementation of sanctions.”

“Commercial banks continue to reveal structural gaps in combating this type of financial crime. The threat of money laundering and terrorist financing is high, while the overall risk of the banking sector is medium-high. Among the main anomalies is the lack of adequate employee training”, reads the report.

The document explains that training courses are predominantly informative, focusing on concepts, without addressing money laundering risk issues in depth and “compliance officers, who are responsible for monitoring suspicious transactions, do not have specific training on the prevention of money laundering.”

According to the central bank, there is disproportionality between the number of customers, the size of credit institutions, and the resources allocated to the compliance function “and some banks face conflicts of interest, as compliance officers simultaneously perform commercial functions, particularly those of branch managers.”

The Bank of Mozambique also claims that it continues to face a shortage of human resources “and only eight employees were assigned for supervisory purposes to cover the entire universe of supervised institutions.”

Source: AIM