Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill, 2024 H.B. 2, 2024

This is a Bill — H.B. 2 of 2024, the Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Bill — not law. Written in the conditional throughout, it would amend the Private Voluntary Organisations Act [Chapter 17:05], the Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Act [Chapter 9:24] and the Criminal Matters (Mutual Assistance) Act [Chapter 9:06].

The Bill's stated driver is compliance with the Financial Action Task Force. FATF placed Zimbabwe under a monitoring programme in October 2018 to align its PVO laws with FATF Recommendation 8, which addresses the risk that charities are used as conduits for money laundering and terrorist financing. A 2021 public consultation added proliferation financing — the illegal sourcing of materials and finance to build, export and deploy nuclear, chemical and biological weapons — to the agenda. Alongside those international drivers, the memorandum states three domestic aims: good internal administration and financial accountability of PVOs, ensuring PVOs do not undertake political lobbying, and requiring foreign or domestic organisations doing charitable work in Zimbabwe with funds solicited inside or outside the country to register unless exempt.

The registration net would widen substantially. Organisations not registered as trusts that receive external funding for charitable objects would have to register. Testamentary trusts, previously outside the Act, would have to register if they receive external funding. Non-testamentary trusts registered with the Registrar of Deeds under section 70A of the Deeds Registries Act would also have to register. In each case the Bill promises a reasonable period to comply, and an entity lawfully operating before commencement could keep operating once it starts registration proceedings, pending the outcome. Exempt would be "State-sponsored aid entities" — entities operating under bilateral or multilateral agreements between their government and Zimbabwe, on the reasoning that the Government has already agreed the scope and conditions of their work.

The PVO Board would be abolished. In its place, the Office of the Registrar of Private Voluntary Organisations would be formally established as a statutory office in the Ministry responsible for social welfare, headed by a Registrar assisted by Assistant Registrars, inspectors and other officers holding public offices within the Public Service — with the Director of Social Welfare acting as Registrar until an appointment is made. The Registrar alone would assess fitness to register, determine applications and hear representations, and a new forum would be created for continuing liaison between the Office and registered PVOs. Appeals against the Registrar's decisions would go to the Minister on specified grounds.

Several new controls would follow. A registered PVO would have to apply to amend its registration on any "material change" to its particulars, and where the change is substantial — a change of objects, or a merger or takeover altering its proprietary structure — the Registrar could require it to re-register. A new Part would set prudential and ethical principles for PVOs, breach of some of which would be a civil default attracting a civil penalty imposed by the Registrar under a new Schedule. The Minister could suspend a PVO's executive committee for maladministration and apply to court for trustees to keep the organisation running during an investigation. The Minister, working with the Reserve Bank's Financial Intelligence Unit, would assess risk at prescribed intervals, designate "high risk" PVOs and entities for closer monitoring and more stringent regulation, and prescribe mitigating measures — and that monitoring could reach activities otherwise exempted from the Act, such as fundraising for schools or hospitals, where the entity carrying them on is high risk. The President or the Minister could enter into reciprocal agreements with other countries on PVO registration and information exchange.

New definitions would sharpen who is accountable: a "beneficial owner" able to exert a significant or preponderant voice through shares, stakes or assets, including through a nominee; and a "controller" who exerts such a voice regardless of the constitution, for instance by virtue of the size of their contributions. "Funds or other assets" is defined very broadly, covering economic resources including oil and natural resources, property of every kind, electronic and digital instruments of title, and anything that might be used to obtain funds, goods or services.

On the money laundering side, the Bill would insert into the Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Act a new offence of financing or partaking in the proliferation or use of weapons of mass destruction, and would amend the Criminal Matters (Mutual Assistance) Act to support the same objectives.

The provision most likely to matter in practice is the clause criminalising the abuse of charitable giving for political purposes. Between that, the widened registration duty and the ministerial power to designate organisations as high risk, the Bill would materially change the operating environment for civil society and for trusts that have never regarded themselves as PVOs.

**On completeness.** The extract available for this summary was cut off at the extraction limit at clause 3, so the account of clauses 4 to 23 and the Schedules above comes from the Bill's own memorandum rather than from the operative text. The civil penalty amounts, the exact wording of the political lobbying offence and the criminal penalties are not reproduced in the available extract and must be read in H.B. 2 of 2024 itself. Note also that the document header carries "H.B. 2A, 2024", suggesting the version extracted may be a revised print of the Bill.