Seychelles: BMIO Press Release

Since November 2014, the day to day management of BMIO bank (the “Bank”) in the Seychelles has been taken over by Central Bank of Seychelles (“CBS”) pursuant to paragraph 3(1) of Schedule 3 of the Financial Institutions Act 2004. The main reason of the take-over was the bank’s loss and inability to re-establish its correspondent banking relationship which is critical for an offshore bank like BMIO.

The shareholders of the Bank would like to communicate the following:

• CBS has in December 2014 appointed Mr Huns Biltoo a KPMG Mauritius Partner, as Reorganising Agent. The Reorganising Agent is currently undertaking an independent examination of the bank, which is separate from the examination conducted by CBS. The findings of this examination will allow for the assessment of the reasons, and come up with an implementation plan to address the issues including the remediation of the causes that have led to the loss of the Bank’s correspondent banking relationship in the past.
• The ongoing issue at the Bank is an operational issue rather than one related to the bank’s financial soundness as CBS pointed out in its Press release of 24 October 2014.
• As regulator of the banking system, one of CBS’ role is to ensure that depositors’ interests are safeguarded. On the basis of financial soundness indicators compiled by CBS on BMIO, there is no indication that depositors’ money held with BMIO are in danger.
• The shareholders of BMIO are fully collaborating with CBS and KPMG and would like to confirm that the Bank has already started a remediation of customer files. This remediation will allow the accounts of all our clients whose files meet all the relevant compliance requirements, both locally and internationally, to operate normally. We believe this will
• enhance and reinforce both the credibility and soundness of our client accounts relationships.
• During the remediation phase, some clients will be receiving requests for updated or additional confirmations arising from the review of client files being performed. The holding of these information by BMIO and the compliance status of a client file from a documentation perspective will be a key requirement for the purposes of effecting both current and future transactions. 

We would like to apologise for the inconvenience and re-assure our clients that the current re-organisation is being done with the interests of our customers at heart.