Africa-Press – Malawi. The country’s civil rights group under the banner Forum for National Development (FND) has written Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) and Financial Intelligence Agency (FIA) for swiftly suspend Victoria Forex Bureau’s operation over forex externalization and money laundering
The call comes barely days after the forex bureau was exposed into dubious money transfers while operating as backstreet bank for years now. After the exposure Victoria Forex Bureau went to court to stop any media house publishing the content of report for fear of shame.
But in a letter The Maravi Post has seen to RBM and FIA, FDN is demanding suspension of the forex bureau for reaping Malawians. FDN National Coordinator Fryson Chodzi warned the central bank and FIA that if will not act swiftly in seven days, his grouping is to mobilize Malawians against financial fraud the bureau has been exposed.
“The allegations raised serious and that claims that the Bureau is part of a Malawi’s Backstreet Bankers. It states that this is an underground syndicate of money laundering and related financial crimes.
“The said allegations are very serious we demand that Reserve Bank of Malawi as a regulator must get to the bottom of this. We demand that the operations of Victoria Forex Bureau must immediately be suspended pending investigations into the allegations,” reads part of the letter to RBM and FIA
The letter adds, “By copy of this letter, the Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA) is demanded to act based on their mandate on the owners of the stated Bureau and also the people mentioned in the report. It’s sad.
“We are saddened with by and the FIA is feigning ignorance when Section 4 of Financial Crimes Act gives power for the authority to conduct research into trends, techniques and development in area of financial crimes, including money laundering, tracing proceeds of crime and terrorist financing in order to improve the detection, prevention and deterrence of money laundering and terrorist financing”.
Warns Chodzi, “Should the RBM as a regulator fail to suspend the operation of Victoria Forex Bureau in the next 7 days, we will have no choice but to institute citizen action against both the RBM, FIA and the Victoria Forex Bureau”.
According to the report Victoria Forex Bureau has been swindling Malawi’s hard earned money through forex externalization without paying taxes over huge billions of dollars among Indians of Malawian origin businesspersons in UK, Dubai, India and overseas countries
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