Maputo, 7 Jul (AIM) – Mozambique’s Financial Intelligence Office (GIFiM) accuses 17 travel and tourism agencies of being involved in money laundering schemes and tax fraud, following an analysis of financial transactions totaling over 58 billion meticais (908.2 million US dollars at the current exchange rate) between January 2022 and September 2025.
These companies are located in the northern province of Nampula and Cabo Delgado and the country’s capital, Maputo.
According to GIFiM report – which analyzed 83 Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs), four Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), 1,526 additional information transactions, 68,739 threshold-based transactions, and eight Financial Intelligence Reports (FIRs) – companies in the travel and tourism sector received and moved large sums, which were subsequently transferred to Mozambican bank accounts held by an unidentified international organization, from where the funds were routed abroad.
“These companies handled substantial amounts through fragmented transactions, using both cash deposits and bank transfers with cash deposits reaching at least 378,000 dollars per day before the funds were transferred to accounts belonging to the same international organization. The volume of cash transactions appears inconsistent with the business volume or the nature of the agencies’ operations, suggesting a strong likelihood that they are being used for illegal activities”, reads the report.
The document also points out the volume of funds transacted reached approximately 223 million dollars in the first nine months of 2025 alone.
“Several agencies used the personal bank accounts of employees, including senior managers, to make large-sum payments intended for the companies’ own accounts, ostensibly related to their operational activities. This practice may have facilitated the concealment of such income from tax authorities and hindered the identification of the funds’ true origin”, reads the document.
The scheme, the body says, involves both nationals and foreign citizens, and “most of the agencies made multiple high-value transfers in a fragmented manner to accounts held by the same international organization. This mechanism made them vulnerable to being used as vehicles for the illegal export of capital.”
The document also points out to the existence of presumably fictitious travel and tourism agencies that recorded high-value bank transfers without evidence of service provision consistent with their stated business purpose.
GIFiM pledges to continue strengthening the monitoring of transactions carried out by companies in the sector, conducting regular audits, increasing the involvement of the Tax Authority, and imposing limits on cash transactions.
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