The Banking Association SA (Basa) and the SA Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) have collaborated with the Hawks to open a forensic analysis centre to boost SA’s capacity to investigate and prosecute financial crimes.
The centre, established on November 2, provides advanced training for 40 senior investigators in essential financial forensic analysis skills, to allow them to more efficiently retrieve and analyse digital data.
It also provides the latest software and hardware as well as technical support for the investigation of money laundering and terrorism funding, among other financial crimes, and will promote further collaboration, professional standards and innovation.
The Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) placed SA on its greylist in February after finding the country was not taking sufficient action to deal with money laundering, the financing of terrorism and other illicit activities.
Basa MD Bongiwe Kunene said the centre was established in less than six months.
In the year to March 2023, banks reported more than 420,000 suspicious transactions to the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) and 3.6-million transactions that breached cash deposit thresholds. While these transactions must be reported, they are not necessarily a breach of law.
Banks are also part of the SA Anti-Money Laundering Integrated Task Force, through which the FIC and law enforcement agencies co-operate on criminal investigations and applications for the seizure and forfeiture of tainted assets.
Sabric, a public benefit organisation with a 20-year history as a partner to banks and the SA Police Service, will host and oversee the project.
Sabric CEO Nischal Mewalall said SA’s greylisting underscores the imperative for banks to partner with regulators and law enforcement to mitigate the risk of the financial system being abused to commit crime.
“Besides contributing to fulfilling the immediate remedial requirements of the FATF, the resourcing and training component of this project will — over the longer term — strengthen the capacity of SA to demonstrate its ability to successfully investigate and prosecute financial crimes,” he said.
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