By 
By Delisa Thwala
The Eswatini Financial Intelligence Unit (EFIU) continued to receive Suspicious Transaction reports (STR).
These reports from accountable, recorded 1,229 for the period of July to September 2024. The said suspicious transactions recorded over E700 million
This information is contained in the 2nd quarterly performance report for the Ministry of Finance.
The report was tabled in Parliament during the week by the Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg.
Institutions involved in the suspicious include Mobile or Value Transfer Service Provider, five banks and a law firm which transacted E8,000,000.00.
The report tallies up E704,232,367.00 as the amount of suspicious transactions.
Worth mentioning is that, the EFIU is responsible for Monitoring and Analysis of financial transactions, where it
conducts the receipt of regulatory reports as indicated in the MLTFP Act of 2011, which
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includes suspicious transaction reports (STR), cash threshold reports (CTR), border declarations and others, which are analysed to produce financial intelligence reports for dissemination to law enforcement agencies (LEA) like Eswatini Revenue Services (ERS).
According to the report, most of the fraud STRs are the scams reported by mostly MVT 1 and MVT 4.
The scams are a total of 266, with 125 successful for an amount of E153,535.32, and 141 as attempts for an amount of E736,734.00.
In respect of STRs with an element of illicit financial flows (IFF), 84 were identified for a potential laundered of E161,462,876.58.
“The transactions were between Eswatini and the following countries: Benin, Botswana, Cyprus, DR Congo, Zambia, South Africa, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Taiwan, Tanzania, Uganda, France, Belgium, Rwanda, United Kingdom, United States of America, Zambia, and Zimbabwe,’’ states the report in part.
Further, the report reveals that the EFIU continues to receive Cash Threshold Reports (CTRs) from accountable institutions.
The CTR mandate previously required accountable institutions to report a single cash transaction equal to or above E15,000.00 within a period of 24hrs, or an aggregation of transaction that adds up to or above E15,000.00.
Through Legal Notice number 88/2024 issued by the Honourable Minister the limit threshold was changed from the E15,000.00 to E25,000.00 effective from July 01, 2024.
It is also mentioned in the report that, the EFIU issued six spontaneous disseminations of intelligence from STRs in the period.
Two reports were disseminated to Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) and four to the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS).
Meanwhile the identified predicate offenses from the six disseminations were as follows, two of the reports were on money laundering amounting to
E295,132,535.99 and the four reports were on tax evasion amounting to E246,558,640.28.
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The EFIU received 15 requests during the quarter. Nine from the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), and six from the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS).
“All nine requests from ACC were for corruption, while those from REPS were as follows; tax evasion, forgery and money laundering four,’’ reads the report in part.
It further mentions that, the EFIU also made 19 initiative-taking dissemination and responses to requests.
