The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has today frozen bank accounts belonging to retail giants Transerve, Electrosales, Powerspeed and ENBEE.
In a circular to bank, the Central bank, through it’s Financial Intelligence Unit ordered banks to freeze accounts belonging to Transerve, a large motor spares distrinution company, which is reportedly a subsidiary of Innscor, a behemoth that is listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.
In the circular, the FIU, as the Financial Intelligence Unit is generally known, also froze accounts belonging to Powerspeed, a leading supplier of electrical, hardware, building and home improvement products and services.
School Uniform concern ENBEE’s accounts were also ordered frozen as well as Halsteads, a leading hardware company.
The FIU said that it noted “unusual activities” in the above named entities’ accounts and thus froze them so as to carry out investigations of money laundering suspicions.
“You shall immediately report to the unit any deposit or other inflow into the account as well as any attempted withdrawal or transfer from the account”, read the statement by the FIU.
Efforts to get a comment from the RBZ as well as the affected entities were fruitless at the time of publication.
The action by the Central bank comes hot on the heals of a threat to crack down on “exchange rate manipulators” by Vice President Constantino Chiwenga.
He made the remarks at a ruling party rally in Marondera at the weekend.
