Zimbabwean police are investigating the country’s top mobile telephone operator Econet Wireless for suspected money laundering, according to a search warrant issued Friday.
The Police ordered the telecommunications giant to reveal its customers’ details and records of all transactions conducted within the first half of 2020, as a stand-off between the government and the company mounts.
The Police said there is a sure information that the firm has fraudulently created fake subscribers to transfer mobile money to other accounts, to be converted to cash.
The government made an action last month by abruptly suspending mobile money transactions provided by telephone operators, which is the most widely used platform to make and receive payments in the crisis-ridden country.
The government also suspended all trade on the country’s stock exchange, which it accused of being complicit in illicit financial activities.
Zimbabwe’s Information Ministry Permanent Secretary, Nick Mangwana, heaped heavy blame on mobile money transfer platforms for galloping inflation, and said that the government was in “possession of impeccable intelligence” that telephone service providers were involved in illicit activities that were sabotaging the country’s economy.
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