Tag: Anti-Money Laundering (AML)

South Africa has been enlisted on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) dreaded “Grey List” for over four months – fortunately, though, the country has not been standing still. Significant new provisions are shaking up the corporate landscape and by comprehensively implementing stricter controls, the country can transition more quickly from the Grey List to the coveted “Whitelist.”

In February this year, South Africa was greylisted by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) because of its failure to comply with its standards and measures to combat illicit financial flows, terrorist funding and potential threats to the integrity of the global financial system. This step is the consequence of the endemic corruption, generally referred to as “state capture” which has long prevailed in the country.

In a recent newsletter, President Cyril Ramaphosa said that South Africa knows what needs to be done to be removed from the greylist and that the fundamentals are in place. Eight areas of strategic deficiency have been identified by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which government needs to urgently address in order to get off the greylist.

With South Africa being added to the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) grey list, we do not believe markets will continue to react over negatively due to the greylisting, especially since a lot of this unwelcome news has already been priced in by markets.

The South African Government, via the Department of Finance, has announced the implementation of the new General Laws Amendment Act. President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the General Laws (Anti Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism) Amendment Act, 2022.

South Africa is the only permanent African member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global anti-money laundering watchdog. This is why it came as a shock to hear that the country is close to being grey-listed following concerns raised by the global body.

New Anti-Money Laundering (AML) scores reduce false positive alerts by 50% while detecting 100% of known money laundering transactions, and discover new aberrant, potentially risky. Money laundering continues to fuel crime and terrorism globally, with the UN estimating up to $2 trillion moved illegally each year.

The Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) is set to include more sectors under its purview as accountable institutions while addressing gaps that may exist in the country’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing framework.

I quickly realised during my accounting articles that technology would have a massive impact on the profession and that I would have to continuously upskill to keep up. Even today, things are changing so fast, one can never just sit back and rely on existing knowledge - I now cultivate a habit of continuous learning.

Knowing who the ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) of an entity is before engaging in any type of business deal, is a critical task that is often overlooked. This is particularly true in today’s increasingly stringent regulatory environment, in which organisations are increasingly expected to understand who they are doing business with to help fight fraud.