Story by Owen Mandovha, Business Reporter
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s Financial Intelligence Unit has started swooping on illicit businesses, whose malpractices have of late become so rampant in the market by either inconveniencing consumers or making goods unjustifiably expensive.
In a statement released this Saturday, the FIU has cited several malpractices which include:
1) failure to bank cash receipts,
2) refusal to allow customers the option to pay for goods in local currency,
3) converting prices using illegal or punitive exchange rates, and
4) charging higher prices for customers paying using transfers from foreign currency accounts.
The FIU states these acts not only are criminal offences prosecutable in the courts of law but are also administrative violations punishable under the Bank Use Promotion Act and the Exchange Control Act.
The FIU has also frozen the bank accounts of four major distributors namely Saxin Trading, Simrac Enterprises, Brainscope Investments and Munella Enterprises that have been diverting basic commodities to the informal market while refusing to supply the same to established retailers who pay for or sell goods in local currency.
These actions by FIU are part of the Government’s response measures to counter the sustained attacks on the economy by some invisible forces which are determined to undermine the economic gains so far recorded since the coming in of the Second Republic.