Maputo, 22 Jul (AIM) – The Insurance Supervisory Institute, the regulatory body for the insurance industry, has fined Mozambique’s largest insurance company, the publicly owned EMOSE, ten million meticais (about 156,000 US dollars, at the current exchange rate) for violations of the Law against Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism.
According to a statement published by the supervisory institute in the Maputo daily “Noticias”, EMOSE committed five offences under this law. Each offence cost the company two million meticais.
The first offence concerned the company’s failure to undertake risk assessment. It had ignored an article in the law which states “Financial institutions and non-financial entities shall adopt appropriate measures to identify, understand and mitigate the risks of money laundering, financing of terrorism and financing the spread of weapons of mass destruction to which they are exposed”.
Another two million meticais fine was imposed because EMOSE failed to identify “politically exposed individuals” involved in the suspect business or transaction.
A further offence concerned life insurance. EMOSE had allegedly paid no attention to an article in the law which states that “in the event that a life insurance policy or other investment products related with insurance, has as its beneficiary a collective person or body without legal status, the financial institutions shall consider this beneficiary as an extra risk factor and shall take strengthened diligence measures”. EMOSE violated the law by failing to identify those beneficiaries subject to tightened diligence.
EMOSE is also accused of violating an article which calls for “the establishment of policies, internal control procedures, verification measures and criteria for hiring employees and regulating internal audits”.
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