Mozambique’s financial intelligence agency has uncovered a suspected money laundering network involving travel agencies that allegedly channelled more than €805 million through the country’s financial system over a three-year period.
The findings were contained in a new strategic analysis released on Monday by the Financial Information Centre (GIFiM), which said the transactions took place between 2022 and 2025 through a pattern of structured cash deposits that were later transferred to bank accounts linked to an unnamed international organisation.
According to the report, the agencies made repeated high-value transfers using fragmented daily cash deposits that appeared inconsistent with the scale of their legitimate business operations.
“The majority of the travel and tourism agencies carried out several high-value transfers in a structured, fragmented manner to bank accounts held by an ‘international organisation’,” the report stated.
GIFiM said the volume of cash handled by the agencies far exceeded what would ordinarily be expected from travel and tourism businesses, raising strong suspicions that some of them were being used to facilitate illicit financial activities.
The agency warned that several of the firms under investigation appeared to have little or no genuine travel-related operations, suggesting they may have served primarily as conduits for laundering illicit funds.
The report noted that the suspected scheme reflects broader concerns over illicit financial flows in Mozambique, where weak regulatory oversight has enabled the use of cash-intensive businesses, shell companies and employee bank accounts to conceal the movement of illegal funds.
According to GIFiM, the arrangement allowed proceeds from suspected criminal activities to enter the formal financial system before being transferred overseas.
To tackle the growing threat, the financial watchdog called for stricter monitoring of travel agencies, regular compliance audits, tighter restrictions on cash transactions and stronger collaboration with tax authorities to detect and prevent money laundering in the sector.
