The former Managing Director of Standard Bank Mozambique, Chuma Nwokocha, was sentenced by the Maputo City Police Court, 5th Section, to the main penalty under which he must pay 1.2 million meticals for authorizing the installation and operation of a replica of its Data Processing Center without the consent of the Bank of Mozambique (BM).

According to our source, the replica would allow data recovery out of Mozambique for any failures or disasters.

The banker was, in the same process, sentenced to accessory penalties that include the inhibition to exercise corporate positions and management functions in credit institutions and financial companies for a period of three years and publication by the Central Bank of the final punishment, at the appellant's expense.

Investigations carried out at the Maputo headquarters of that bank found a duplication of functions with the already installed Data Processing Centre and the SIMO Network, also on its premises. With this, it was concluded that it operated a redundancy that only functioned in case of contingency due to a blackout of the SIMO Network. This redundancy operates cloud-based and domiciled in Frankfurt, Germany.

"The law prohibits, however, that the facilities of replicas of the Centers are located at a distance greater than 15 km from the location of the main processing center, Exceptionally, the Centers may be installed abroad, provided that it is ensured that there are no legal conflicts and the difference in time zones does not jeopardize the operation of Credit Institutions and Financial Companies. In this case, there must be prior authorization from the Bank of Mozambique," our source reports.

Still, the ruling reports that Standard Bank failed to inform in a timely manner.