The Financial Intelligence Centre recently issued its 2021/2022 Annual Report and we thought it prudent and useful to detail the important considerations, facts, highlights and learnings from this report.
Some key highlights at a glance include a considerable difference and improvement between the FIC’s previous Annual Report in terms of recovering criminal proceeds, increasing from R3.3 billion to R5 billion, achieving a 100 percent success rate in matters referred for administrative sanctions as well as blocking R204.4 million as suspected proceeds of crime.
The FIC also entered into several collaborations with key partners, including:
- The FATF, which is the international money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog and sets the standards aimed at fighting against these crimes as well as the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units, which is a body made up of 166 Financial Intelligence Units, aimed at countering terrorist financing
- The South African Anti-Money Laundering Integrated Task Force (SAMLIT), which is South Africa’s first public private partnership, between the banking sector and government regulatory authorities, with the purpose of enhancing collaboration and co-ordination in fighting against financial crime, money laundering and terrorist financing (ML and TF), and which had particular success in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade
- The Fusion Centre, which is also a public private collaboration against ML and TF and since its formation in December 2019, it has, with the assistance of law enforcement agencies and competent authorities, preserved and recovered approximately R1.75 billion in criminal assets
Proposed amendments to Schedules 1, 2 and 3 were tabled in parliament in May 2022, aimed at including Crypto Asset Service Providers (CASPs), Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) and high-value goods dealers as Accountable Institutions (AI), making them subject to the full suite of FICA obligations.
In addition, with the repeal of the Estate Agency Affairs Act and its replacement with the Property Practitioners Act in February 2022, the term “estate agent” has been changed to the term “property practitioner” which includes additional categories of persons and entities under its purview such as property brokers, bond facilitators, home inspectors, companies selling timeshare, homeowner associations, property developers and property managers. This means that any person registered as an estate agent prior to February 2022 will remain an AI in terms of FICA and any person performing the activities of an estate agent, although they may be referred to as a property practitioner after February 2022, will too be considered as an AI in terms of Item 3 of Schedule 1 to the FICA.
The FIC has been particularly active in terms of their inspections in several business industries, with the highest number of inspection reports targeting legal practitioners, motor vehicle dealers and ...
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