Days after the Financial Intelligence Centre's annual trends report made headlines for its estimate of US$1.8 billion in suspected illicit flows, a second case study from the same document has surfaced. News Diggers reported on Monday 2 November that a company registered to provide business support services received more than K222 million and US$5.7 million within three months, routed through a network of payment firms registered for unrelated activities, among them money transfer, transport support and soft-drink manufacturing. The Rio Times, which also read the report, put the combined sum at roughly US$16.7 million.
The FIC names nobody. Its companies are lettered A to E. According to the Rio Times, Company B, the recipient of the K222 million, was registered as a business support services provider but was not a licensed payment firm, and its ultimate owners were two West African nationals. Company A, a remittance business, showed money moving quickly with little visible commercial activity behind it, with many transfers described as equipment purchases. News Diggers reported that Company A held accounts at three banks and received K85 million and US$21 million between June 2024 and August 2025. Of the three linked firms, only Company C was properly registered as a payment provider, and only Companies B and C were registered for tax.
Suspected, not proven
The FIC classifies the case as abuse of payment service providers and has referred it to law enforcement. The Rio Times stressed that the activity is described as suspected rather than established and that no charges have been announced; a separate matter involving a company it labels AX was also referred for investigation. The Diggers report carried the figure of K222 million in its standfirst and a figure of more than K300 million in its headline, a difference the paper did not explain in the portion of the article available to non-subscribers.
The report's wider findings were set out by Zambia Monitor on Wednesday 28 October: 786 intelligence reports passed to law enforcement in 2025, down 17.4 per cent from 951 the year before, of which 580 concerned suspected tax evasion and 192 suspected money laundering; tax assessments by the Zambia Revenue Authority of more than K12.5 billion including penalties and interest; eight convictions and forfeitures worth US$3.3 million; and suspected illicit financial flows of US$1.8 billion, down from US$3.5 billion in 2024.
The Rio Times added a forward-looking note of its own: Zambia faces a peer review of its anti-money-laundering regime in 2027, and a weak result could bring closer scrutiny of its financial links abroad. That assessment is the paper's, not the FIC's.
Sources: News Diggers, “FIC exposes more money laundering scheme involving over K300m” (2 Nov 2026); The Rio Times, “Zambia Money Laundering Scheme Tops US$16M” (2 Nov 2026); Zambia Monitor, “FIC flags 580 suspected tax evasion cases, as illicit financial flows hit $1.8 billion” (28 Oct 2026).