Africa-Press – Mozambique. A memorandum of understanding signed today between the Bank of Mozambique and the French Embassy addresses money laundering and financial crimes linked to terrorism. The MoU provides for the country to receive 500,000 euros, the equivalent of 38 million meticais, to fight terrorism and money laundering, O País reports.
The Governor of the Bank of Mozambique, Rogério Zandamela, said that the signing of the memorandum creates conditions to identify and mitigate activities related to the illicit circulation of capital in the country.
Zandamela said it was urgent to strengthen the banking system to prevent and combat terrorism and money laundering.
“We are aware of the exposure of our financial system to the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing, which makes the need to increasingly strengthen the mechanisms for identifying and combating this evil imperative,” he said.
Under the initiative, the central bank commits to making the implementation of the memorandum more flexible, through technical assistance, so that the country has a regulatory framework better suited to current challenges, as well as strategic guidance for the implementation of a more effective and comprehensive monitoring system.
“We, as the central bank, will continue to mobilise our cooperation partners to improve the necessary technical and technological capacities to better respond to the challenges posed in the context of money laundering and terrorist financing,” Zandamela concluded.
Representing the French Development Agency (AFD), French ambassador to Mozambique David Izzo he hoped that the initiative would help the Mozambican banking system become more robust and better able to control the movement of illicit capital destined for terrorists.
“This cooperation with the Bank of Mozambique is at the heart of our support against terrorism. We know that there is no unfunded terrorism, and that there are links between trafficking of all kinds, where money transfers are not tracked,” Ambassador Izzo said.
The €500,000 programme is to be implemented by Expertise France, a partner of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD).
“Our desire is that this collaboration will bring innovative elements, which will make it possible to strengthen the Bank of Mozambique’s surveillance systems and control resources, and at the same time, strengthen the development of technical skills in the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism”, concluded Izzo.
The memorandum of understanding signed this Wednesday in Maputo comes at a time when Mozambique, and the world generally, is confronted with the problem of financial crime funding terrorist actions.
