Africa-Press – Angola. The process of updating Bank of Commerce and Industry (BCI) customers’ bank accounts, started on 1 May, will run until the first half of June this year, a mandatory measure for all customers of this financial institution.
According to BCI, this measure is part of the process of updating the customer database and registration, and therefore all customers are subject to compliance with this regulation, under penalty of having their bank accounts blocked.
In this way, and in order to guarantee the security of operations, the updating of accounts will be carried out at any of the BCI service points, assures the bank in a press release cited by Jornal de Angola.
According to the banking institution, the measure also aims to comply with Law No. 5/2020, of January 27, the Law to Prevent and Combat Money Laundering, Financing of Terrorism and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
With regard to this law, the National Bank of Angola (BNA) recently instituted sanctions against three commercial banks, for having violated the norms for the protection of consumers of financial products and services, internal control and the prevention and fight against money laundering.
In the list of three sanctioned banks, BCI is included, for failing to comply with the procedures for identifying the origin and entry of currency into the country, violating, among other legal provisions, the Law on the Prevention and Combat of Money Laundering, on the Financing of Terrorism and the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Among the infractions of this bank, there is also the inadequate parameterization of the computer application in use in this institution, as there is no interconnection with the customer’s risk matrix, as well as risk management and mitigation.
BCI’s non-compliance also includes irregularities in the identification of customers and the lack of justification for the origin and destination of the funds.
In response to the sanction imposed by the Central Bank, BCI clarifies that the facts object of the penalty occurred before the privatization process of the commercial bank, concluded in early 2022, with the current management taking office in the second half of the same year.
To this end, the present Board of Directors of BCI formally assumed its commitment and focus on resolving the deficiencies identified at the level of the internal control system, representing one of the pressing priorities of the current management.
With more than 700 thousand customers, BCI had around 80 branches in Angola, until 31 December 2021, when it was purchased at an auction on the stock exchange by the Carrinho Empreendimentos group, which invested 165 thousand kwanzas for each of the 100 thousand shares offered for sale, totaling a final price of 16 billion and five million kwanzas.
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