Further to its Press Statement of 9 April 2020, advising of the suspension of operating licences of Cash  Twenty Four (Pvt) Limited (Cash Twenty Four) and Crediconnect (Pvt) Limited (Crediconnect) for suspected involvement in illicit foreign currency transactions and for breaching the conditions of their licences, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (the Bank) wishes to update the public as follows:

Both Cash Twenty Four and Crediconnect were referred to the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), which upon carrying out further investigations, has charged both for not adhering to anti-money laundering requirements, inter alia, failure to record and report transactions, as required by the law. The two institutions carried out several off-book foreign currency purchases and sales, which they did not declare in periodic regulatory returns.

Cash-Twenty Four has since admitted the charge of failing to record and declare foreign currency transactions and has since paid the imposed administrative fine of ZW$2,500 000 (two million five hundred thousand dollars). The case against Crediconnect is still pending determination.

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Further, the Bank has identified two more bureaux de change, namely, Shons Finance Services (Pvt) Limited (Shons Finance Services) and Superdeal Enterprises (Pvt) Limited trading as Kwik Forex (Kwik Forex), which have not been declaring or have been under-declaring their foreign exchange transactions, in breach of the law. The Bank has also identified three unlicenced entities, namely Stallion Financial Services (Pvt) Limited (Stallion), Forbes Financial Services (Pvt) Limited (Forbes) and Juso Global (Pvt) Limited Juso Global), which have been trading in foreign currency.

The Bank has, with immediate effect, suspended the operating licences of Shons Finance Services and Kwik Forex, pending further investigations and regulatory action. The Bank has referred the unlicenced entities (Stallion, Forbes and Juso Global) to the FIU for further investigation and appropriate action in terms of the law. Meanwhile, the Financial Intelligence Unit has frozen all the accounts of all the above-mentioned entities.

The Bank continues to monitor financial services players with a view to dealing effectively with market indiscipline.