The Bank of Mozambique this year imposed a fine of 134.9 million meticais (1.9 million euros) on Banco Comercial e de Investimentos (BCI), part of Caixa Geral de Depósitos, and 12 of its directors.
The information is contained in a note from the central bank, released today, on sanctions applied in the period from October 2022 to December 2023, involving five credit institutions and “12 members of the management body of one of the credit institutions sanctioned, with fines, for violating prudential, foreign exchange and consumer protection rules for financial products and services”.
The fine imposed in 2023 – the central bank doesn’t specify the date – on BCI, Mozambique’s largest bank, led by Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), is the result of “accepting an alternative and indirect way of fulfilling a credit obligation, weakening its position, as a creditor”, the “undue exoneration of an institutional client from its credit responsibilities”, the “unfounded write-off of part of the interest generated in a credit relationship” and the “assumption of costs contractually assigned to an institutional client”.
Twelve members of the BCI board were also fined a total of around 17.2 million meticais (244,280 euros), according to the same report from the Mozambican central bank.
BCI has a share capital of 10 billion meticais (140 million euros), in a shareholder structure led (51%) by Caixa Participações, of the Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) group, and also includes the Portuguese bank BPI (35.67%), also directly owned by CGD (10.51%), among others.
The remaining four fines imposed on banks, all from 2022 (October to December), include First National Bank Moçambique, in the amount of 28.9 million meticais (411,020 euros), Banco Letshego, in the amount of 20 million meticais (284,440 euros), Banco Internacional de Moçambique, in the amount of 17.2 million meticais (244,620 euros), and MyBucks Banking Corporation, in the amount of eight million meticais (113,700 euros).
The profits of BCI, the largest in Mozambique, fell 6.6% in the first half of the year, to almost 50 million euros, according to information from the institution led by Caixa Geral de Depósitos, consulted today by Lusa.
In the financial statements for the period from January 1 to June 30, 2023, BCI says that the bank’s net profit fell to 3,453 million meticais (49.4 million euros), compared to profits of 3,699 million meticais (52.9 million euros) a year earlier, at the end of June 2022.
With 2,712 employees and 211 branches across the country, the bank “remains the largest bank operating in the Mozambican financial system”, in terms of business volume (credit and deposits) and assets, according to the institution itself.
