Zimbabwe government has with immediate effect,suspended Ecocash and all other Mobile Money Transfer platforms in a desperate bid to curb the US dollar exchange rates which have continued to rise above the governments gazetted inter-bank rate. By Tinotenda Samukange, Online Last month the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe ordered banks to freeze accounts associated with attached list of Ecocash and OneMoney agents. It turned out the central bank did not just stop there, but instead sent an order to Zimbabwe’s largest mobile wallet operator, Ecocash to freeze agent lines. The order instructed Ecocash to freeze the agent lines of all traders whose transactions exceed $100 000 ZWL per month until certain KYC activities are completed. Full Statement Government has, with immediate effect, undertaken a series of prudent and coordinated interventions to deal with malpractices, criminality and economic sabotage perpetrated by the “wolves in sheep skins amongst our population” that His Excellency the President alluded to during his official address on the occasion of the Hero’s burial of Cde Stanley Nleya (Gagisa) at the National Shrine. These measures include the suspension of all monetary transactions on phone-based mobile money platforms in order to facilitate intrusive investigations, leading to the arrest and prosecution of offenders. Concurrently, the measures will also include the suspension of all trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. These measures are to subsist until such time that the mobile money platforms have been reformed to their original purpose and all the current phantom rates of exchange have converged into one genuine rate that is determined by market forces under the Foreign Currency Auction System which was launched by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe on 23rd June 2020. Operational modalities and details of the envisaged measures are going to be announced by the relevant monetary, regulatory and law enforcement authorities in the next few days. Government will concurrently ensure that prudent measures are also put in place to mitigate and prevent any collateral damage that these interventions may cause to the innocent transacting public who were using these platforms. Government is in possession of impeccable intelligence which constitutes a prima facie case whereby the phone-based mobile money systems of Zimbabwe are conspiring, with the help of the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, either deliberately or inadvertently, in illicit activities that are sabotaging the economy. These activities include: – a) Illegal externalization of foreign currency through transfer mispricing; b) Acting as banks outside the purpose for which they were originally licensed, as non-banking financial institutions. This includes, in the particular case of Ecocash, holding well in excess of ZWL$8 billion distributed across just over 501 000 agent/merchant lines as lat 10 June 2020, which is not under the scrutiny of the Financial Intelligence Unit; c) Fraudulently creating and issuing non-attributable and non-auditable agent cellphone