The Zimbabwean banking sector is very unpredictable. Not only have Zimbabweans had their fingers burnt multiple times as happened in 2008 and 2018 when their accounts were reduced to meaningless zeros thanks to government regulations and policies we also have to deal with banks that make their money through bank charges. It seems Zimbabwe’s elite have had enough.

According to the Zimbabwe Anti Corruption Commission (ZACC) a recent survey they conducted has shown that Zimbabwe’s bigwigs and other rich people were now using off-shore bank accounts to hide their wealth. Locally they only keep ZWL accounts with their USD safe and far away from the reach of the RBZ and other authorities. Switzerland seems to be a favourite.

It has been revealed that politically exposed people like Kuda Tagwirei, Billy Rautenbach and a number of other prominent business people in Zimbabwe have offshore bank accounts and wealth that they hide in other jurisdictions. According to the NewsHawks, there are a staggering 700 Zimbabweans with billions in their bank accounts.

Trust is very essential and if we are going to move forward, we really need to build trust. Let’s look at the banks. The CEOs of banks don’t bank money with the banks. We carried out that survey,
“So, if a CEO of a bank does not have confidence in his or her own institution, who is then going to bank the money in those banks? Nobody. That’s the highest level of corruption. So, we want to implore CEOs of banks to start banking, especially foreign currency, in their banks, then everybody will start banking their money,
L. Matanda-Moyo ZACC chairperson