The Sunday Mail
Richard Muponde
Business executives of companies involved in illicit foreign currency trading on the black market will soon have their personal bank accounts frozen and possibly blacklisted from the country’s financial system, The Sunday Mail has gathered.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s Financial Intelligence Unit is presently auditing bank accounts belonging to contractors engaged by Government to undertake infrastructure development projects, believed to be pumping excess liquidity into the market, driving volatility of the Zimbabwe dollar.
Auditors are also poring through accounts belonging to the companies’ executives as part of the sting operation.
FIU director-general Mr Oliver Chiperesa told company executives during a recent no-holds-barred meeting at the RBZ offices in Harare that the central bank’s investigations arm was on the trail of suspected offenders.
Mr Chiperesa said investigations have already uncovered how some executives were using multiple shelf companies to engage in black market activities and evade detection by authorities.
He said the FIU was now “following the money.”
“Once we notice those funds, as we have noticed in the past, we will freeze those accounts and the proceeds will be forfeited to the State and that is allowed by the law,” he said.
“We will also have those contractors and their directors blacklisted.
“Most of them tend to use shelf companies and we now have a way of seeing when they close those companies and start new ones.
“We now have strong mechanisms to make sure we know who they are.”
He said offending contractors were “biting the hand that feeds them” and the practice will soon “be a thing of the past.”
Mr Chiperesa said the FIU had also launched a blitzkrieg targeting companies selling their products exclusively in United States dollars in contravention of the law.
He said the operation will also nail companies receiving forex from the RBZ auction and indexing their prices on the black market exchange rates.
“There has been growing concern on the trend whereby an increasing number of products are now being sold in US dollars exclusively, without affording consumers the opportunity to pay in local currency, contrary to existing laws,” he added.
“So, we really want to understand from the market why this is so and then probably to agree the way forward on what we need to do.”
He said Government and business require market stability.
During the meeting, Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Mr Kurai Matsheza accused informal traders of charging exclusively in foreign currency.
Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce president Mr Mike Kamungeremu agreed, adding that there were challenges with accessing foreign currency on the official market.
“I think my brother spoke of the informal market, the tuckshops downtown, these don’t care about statutory instruments,” he said.
“They have actually been taking the spaces of formal businesses.
“You find that after Government announced that duty on some basic goods had been scrapped some of them are now going to South Africa and bring in goods.”
He said these imported goods were being sold on the doorsteps of registered retailers.
Mr Kamungeremu also said the foreign currency auction and willing-buyer-willing-seller systems need fine-tuning.
“We have tried calling the banks ourselves, but they are saying the US$10 000 prescribed by law is not even available,” he added.
“This is so because there are plenty of willing buyers but there are not many willing sellers.”
