Madame Speaker, 

Money laundering, criminal financing and terrorist financing are some of the most serious commercial crimes facing not just South Africa but also the entire international community. 

Post 9/11, the international community became much more vigilant in countering these crimes through a series of statutes and procedures. South Africa was no different and we passed the Financial Intelligence Centre Act in 2001. 

However, a review of our implementation of that Act in 2003 by the Financial Action Task Force showed up problems with enforcement and therefore with the success of our system. The task force recommended that we should give more responsibilities and powers to supervisory bodies to enforce the Act. 

The bill before the House today aims to do exactly that. Very importantly, it moves enforcement from a criminal perspective only, to an administrative enforcement process that would, hopefully, be more streamlined, quicker to respond and would remove some of the pressure on our criminal justice system. The IFP supports this shift. 

Among others, the bill turns the Centre into a "super-regulator" - a provision that caused some debate among sectors that already have their own regulators. A legitimate question raised was whether these regulators, who were already performing a supervisory role, would be supplanted by the Centre with more powers?  

The IFP hopes that the expanded role given to the Centre would not lead to this situation and hopefully there will be better co-ordination and co-operation between the various regulators and not conflict which would paralyse enforcement. 

The IFP would also have liked to see the scope of institutions covered by the Act to be widened to cover all possibilities for money-laundering. For instance, the Act should also apply to religious organisations in our view. 

As is the case with all laws, this Bill will stand or fall by its implementation. There is no point in having good legislation on paper that cannot be implemented in practise. For instance, the budgetary implications for this Bill have not been fully costed as yet, and as a party we find that problematic. What the legislature is in effect doing is to present the Centre with a blank cheque which it might use when approaching Treasury for future funding. 

For this reason, the IFP will be monitoring the implementation of this bill very carefully to ensure that it will indeed be an improvement on the principal act. 

The IFP supports the bill 

Thank you

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Mr Narend Singh MP: 083 788 5954