It’s been just over a year since the global watchdog the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) put South Africa on the international #greylist for failing to meet international standards with regards to anti- #moneylaundering, combating the financing of terrorism and proliferation financing.
Since then #SouthAfrica has managed to make immense progress.
On 27 October 2023, the FATF Plenary formally re-rated 18 of the 20 South African deficiencies, this was based on the progress made by the South African authorities in the two-year period following the 2021 mutual evaluation.
Of these, fifteen were upgraded to be no longer deficient, as fourteen Recommendations are now fully or largely compliant, and one Recommendation was rated as not being applicable to South Africa. Following these re-ratings, South Africa is now deemed to be fully or largely compliant (or not deficient) in 35 of the 40 FATF Recommendations, including in 5 of the 6 core FATF Recommendations.
So why all this fuss about this FATF?
For clarity the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is a finance watchdog that is given power and relevance by the #G7 & expanded into the #G20 an intergovernmental organisations.
It was established in 1989 to combat money laundering, terrorist and proliferation financing, as well as other threats to the integrity of the international financial system. Its notable that the terrorist mandate of the organization was only added in 2001.
The #FATF sets global standards for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, promotes the effective implementation of these standards, and it conducts mutual evaluations of member countries to assess their compliance with the FATF Recommendations.
So why does this matter so much to SA & how is this money moving around in SA?
One of the issues that isn’t spoken about enough in South Africa is how there are reports that spaza shops that are more and more being foreign owned are likely assisting the funding of terrorist groups.
Crazy crazy business.
#IslamicState (IS) and linked extremists are believed to be hijacking South Africa's smaller #financial services to fund #terror attacks across Africa by moving billions of rand through spaza shops and retail outlets in the informal sector.
The profits from informal and often unregistered spaza shops and money from other criminal activity funds are then quietly sent in modest smaller amounts to Islamist terror cells spread over the continent to avoid being discovered.