Tanzania has been lauded for cracking down on money launderers and making it difficult for anonymous owners of multinationals in the extractive industry involved in the practice.

In a study titled Financial Secrecy Index 2020, the country was praised for enacting the recent Anti-Money Laundering (Electronic Fund Transfer and Cash Transaction Reporting) Regulations 2019 and the Tanzania Extractive Industries (Transparency and Accountability) Regulations 2019 that make it easy to know the ownership of companies.

“To date, the Tanzania Executive Industry Transparency Intuitive Committee has agreed on its roadmap to implement beneficial ownership disclosure, including establishing a materiality threshold of one per cent stake for the disclosure of beneficial ownership and establishing a central registry to house information from the extractive industry,” the study states.

The study also cites a $800,000 fine on five undisclosed banks in the region “for breach of anti-money laundering rules” saying these “are an indicator of increased oversight over financial institutions”.

As a measure to stop money laundering, the study says Tanzania has introduced “mandatory reporting formats with more details on the remitter and receiver of funds and strict reporting guidelines for lawyers and accountants”.

Money-transfer agents including forex bureaus are now required to report to the Financial Intelligent Unit of the ministry of Finance when making transactions of over $10,000 for cash transfers and $1,000 for digital transfers.

Tanzania is ranked 98 out of 133 jurisdictions in the world, and considered “moderately” secretive. Rwanda is one step below, at position 99, and Kenya leads the region in financial secrecy, at position 24 globally.