Tag: law enforcement

Austerity does not need to mean suffering. Cutting public spending is urgent to address South Africa’s growing debt. Delaying cuts will only worsen debt and interest payments, making future cuts more severe. Reducing spending needn’t harm South Africans, as many wasteful expenses can be removed. In 2023, the Democratic Alliance (DA) estimated that the African National Congress (ANC)-led departments wasted around R40 billion in 2022/23 alone.

It is vital for employees to understand how to conduct themselves during dawn raids or interactions with regulators. Failure to do so may result in significant consequences for the employer. The European Commission recently fined a European company after a senior employee deleted private WhatsApp messages during a dawn raid pertaining to a competition law violation.

Life might have been harder in the times of Moses, but it was simpler: Move towards a promised land, move away from an evil persecutor, and survive in between. His people understood where they were going and what they were prepared to sacrifice for it, and they had a clear purpose.

We don’t like people urinating in public. At the same time, most liberal-minded people wouldn’t want somebody jailed for it or might feel uncomfortable seeing someone being flogged in public for the offence. Still, it is a bad habit; unhygienic and the nudity a bit of a shock on an empty stomach. We want a sense of order, don’t we?

Few business leaders dispute that artificial intelligence (AI) is on course to upend every major market sector and industry, but many boards aren’t always aware of what a successful AI strategy looks like, or how best to prepare their organisations for the change.

The Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) brings to the attention of all accountable institutions, important information regarding penalties and administrative sanctions for non-compliance. This information applies also to those institutions included on Schedule 1 of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 2001 (Act 38 of 2001) since December 2022.

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.”

On 1 April 2023, the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) released its new “beneficial ownership register” functionality on its e-services platform. This new requirement has placed companies under the spotlight as they must now declare their beneficial ownership to the CIPC. This means the days when the “warm body” which sits behind a company can no longer remain off record.

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.

As technology continues to advance rapidly, governments worldwide are grappling with the need to regulate various aspects of the digital realm. South Africa, a leading economy on the African continent, has not been immune to this global trend.