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Georgia’s central bank has slapped fines totalling more than 2m lari ($766.400) on five privately owned currency exchange businesses in the country’s Adjara region for alleged offences such as failure to verify customers’ data or provide digital records of transactions.
Pasha Bank, one of Azerbaijan’s biggest lenders, has appointed Punhan Narimanov, who has held senior roles in Azerbaijan’s finance sector, as chairman and chief executive officer of the bank’s Georgian arm.
The financial police force of the South Caucasus country of Georgia said it had arrested the suspected manager of an unregistered cryptocurrency business that allegedly had deals worth tens of millions of dollars on its record.
The Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), a pan-African development institution, has raised 350m Swiss francs ($431m) in a landmark digital bond issue arranged by Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank.
Kazakhstan and China took their financial cooperation further at the end of July by, among other things, signing agreements including a currency swap accord and a deal on settlements in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and considering plans for easier cross-border payments.
Uzbekistan’s economic crime prevention agency said the state had missed a revenue of 42.5bn soums ($3.6m) because of a tax evasion scheme involving companies and tax service officials.
Ipoteka Bank, one of Uzbekistan’s biggest lenders and part of Hungarian banking group OTP, has confirmed the appointment of Adam Szentpeteri as chief executive officer, a role he has held on a provisional basis since June 3.
Mintoak, a Mumbai-based payment software provider with a reported annual processing volume of $93bn, has acquired Emirati loyalty technology company ICC Loyalty in a deal said to have added more than 50 banks in over 20 countries to the Indian fintech’s network of partners.
Uzbekistan’s state-controlled National Investment Fund (UzNIF) has reported a year-on-year net profit surge of nearly 4,000 per cent but chiefly owed the stunning increase to unrealised gains on equity investments – recorded potential but unacquired profits, an Uzbek business news portal said.
An Uzbek government advisory agency has come up with a proposal to cut income tax for banks and other financial services providers to 15 per cent from today’s 20 per cent and introduce value-added tax to compensate the state for consequent revenue shortfalls.
