Maputo, July 6, 2026 (Lusa) - The Mozambican Financial Intelligence Unit (GIFiM) has identified strong evidence that travel agencies facilitate financial flows that may involve money laundering, capital movements, and tax fraud, following the detection of transactions totalling €805.5 million over a three-year period.
In a Strategic Analysis Report to which Lusa gained access on Monday, GIFiM states that companies in the travel agency and tourism sector received and handled large sums, mainly in cash, which they then transferred to bank accounts in Mozambique held by an “international organisation”, from which the funds were channelled abroad.
The analysis covering the period from 1 January 2022 to 1 September 2025 indicates that these companies have been transacting “substantial sums of money, in instalments, via cash deposits and bank transfers”, amounting to at least 24 million meticais per day (€331,800) in cash deposits, before these sums were transferred to the accounts of the same unidentified “international organisation”.
“Given the volume of funds handled in cash at the travel agencies, which does not appear to be consistent with their turnover and the nature of their corporate purpose, there are strong indications that these may be being used for illicit activities,” it states.
GIFiM states that the mechanism allowed “funds of illicit origin to be introduced into the financial system, and subsequently illicitly exported via this international organisation”.
The analysis focused on 83 Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs), four Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), 1,526 transactions requiring additional information, 68,739 threshold transactions and eight Financial Information/Intelligence Reports (RIF), enabling the identification of “the total amount of credits totalling at least 58,258,763,435.45 meticais [€805.5 million]”, credited to the bank accounts of the same organisation.
The data reveals a significant increase in the amounts transacted over the years, reaching 14.158 billion meticais (€195.7 million) in the first nine months of 2025 alone.
The report identifies 17 travel and tourism agencies that transferred funds to the same organisation from the city of Maputo (south), Nampula and Cabo Delgado (north).
GIFiM points out that several travel and tourism agencies “used the personal bank accounts of their employees, including senior managers,” to “make large payments into bank accounts held” by those agencies, “allegedly related to the operational activities” of those entities.
“This facilitated the concealment of such income from the tax authorities and thereby made it difficult to identify the true origin of the funds,” the report states.
“Investigators found that several travel and tourism agencies, presumed to be fictitious, recorded bank transfers of large sums of money whilst allegedly having provided no services whatsoever related to their corporate purpose”, as the amounts transacted “did not exhibit a structure that appears to be related to the exercise of any operational economic activity by these companies”, it further points out.
GIFiM maintains that “the majority of travel and tourism agencies carried out several high-value transfers in instalments to bank accounts held by an ‘International Organisation’, and it is presumed that, in this way, they became vulnerable to being used as a means for the illicit export of capital”.
It also highlights the involvement of nationals and foreign nationals in transactions, the extensive use of cash deposits, and the existence of bank accounts belonging to newly established agencies that exhibit transaction patterns inconsistent with those typically associated with the travel and tourism sector.
The document acknowledges suspicions of money laundering, tax fraud, and the forgery of documents to facilitate the illegal export of capital, among other crimes, “which only an investigation will be able to identify”.
GIFiM recommends enhanced monitoring of transactions carried out by companies in the sector, regular audits, greater intervention by the Tax Authority, and the imposition of limits on cash transactions.
PVJ/ADB // ADB.
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