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Monday, February 27 2023
Monday, February 27 2023

SA’s greylisting by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is of serious concern as the reputational damage may act as a disincentive for job-creating investment and increase the cost of doing business with SA (“SA faces three-year slog to get off terror finance greylist”, February 24).

Greylisting now means investments or financial flows by international companies into the country will be subject to higher levels of due diligence and more thorough processing and vetting of clients than before, which could add to the cost of doing business with our country.

At the heart of the eight “deficiencies” is the fact that fully fledged investigations and subsequent prosecutions for financial crimes remain far too few. This is an indictment on the criminal justice system and something that requires urgent attention.

The key to being removed from the FATF grey list lies in acting with urgency to successfully prosecute and put away those guilty of financial crimes, money laundering, and terror financing.

While the FATF has indicated that the national government is “actively working with the FATF to address strategic deficiencies in their regimes to counter money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing,” it is regrettable that the country was unable to sufficiently address these deficiencies in the three years since first identified in 2019 in the mutual evaluation.”

It is critical that the remaining deficiencies are urgently addressed so that the country is seen to act against those guilty of corruption, money laundering and terror financing. Until this happens investment will continue to be compromised, costing more jobs just at a time when we need them the most.

Mireille Wenger
Western Cape finance & economic opportunities MEC

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