Mozambique: Central bank fines, bars BCI bank’s CEO appointed by Portugal’s Caixa

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Mozambique: Central bank fines, bars BCI bank’s CEO appointed by Portugal’s Caixa

11:19 CAT | 29 Aug 2019

BCI last year had a net profit of 4.026 billion meticais, up 62.7% on 2017. It has 203 branches and business units around the country, 55 of them in rural areas. [File photo: Lusa]

The Bank of Mozambique has fined and barred from his position as CEO of the bank BCI, one of Mozambique’s leading banks, Paulo Sousa, an appointee of Portugal’s state-owned Caixa Geral de Depósitos, BCI’s majority shareholder.

Under the law governing credit institutions and financial corporations, Mozambique’s financial regulator has imposed on Sousa “a fine of 200,000 meticais” [around €2,900] and “the inhibition from the exercise of directorships and management positions in credit institutions and financial corporations for three years,” the Bank of Mozambique said in a statement.

According to the central bank, “the defendant acted in conflict of interest when he took part in the process of appreciation and decision on the proposal for the acquisition of Interbancos by the Sociedade Interbancária de Moçambique (SIMO).”

Interbancos and SIMO are online banking and automatic teller platforms in Mozambique.

The Bank of Mozambique justifies its decision on the grounds that Sousa defended, “simultaneously, the interests of SIMO, as director, and Interbancos as chairman of the board of directors.”

Citing the law, the statement says that “members of administrative or supervisory bodies may not participate in the assessment and decision on acquisition of shares … in companies or other collective entities of which they are managers or in which they hold significant holdings.”

Sousa has presided over the executive committee of BCI since 2013.

The bank last year had a net profit of 4.026 billion meticais, up 62.7% on 2017.

It has 203 branches and business units around the country, 55 of them in rural areas.