The SA Anti-Money Laundering Integrated Task Force (Samlit) will be strengthening its regional co-operation capabilities with its counterparts in east and Southern Africa to step up the fight against financial crime, including the illegal wildlife trade, a big funding source for organised crime.
Samlit, a public-private partnership between the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), the Prudential Authority and the banking industry, has formally agreed to share its experience in how banks can collaborate with regulators and state law-enforcement agencies to tackle financial crime with east and Southern Africa Anti-money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG). It also wants to assist ESAAMLG in setting up its own public-private partnerships with banks in the region, a plan that was endorsed by the Council of Ministers in September 2022.
So far ESAAMLG, a regional body of 19 countries including SA that co-ordinates efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, has comprised only state bodies, but the success of Samlit in roping in banks to step up the fight will now be replicated in other member countries. The regional body, which is styled along the lines of the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), has also signed an agreement with United for Wildlife (UfW), an organisation created in 2014 by Prince William and The Royal Foundation to protect endangered species from the illicit wildlife trade.
“We are sharing the knowledge and methodologies with ESAAMLG which is important because these partnerships allow us to deal collaboratively with the banks to improve the quality of reports on big cases and be able to share better and more comprehensive intelligence with law enforcement agencies,” said FIC director Xolisile Khanyile, who chairs Samlit.
“Crime knows no borders and organised criminals don’t use one bank — they try to hide their activities by having multiple bank accounts either in their own name or the name of, say, a trust. So working with the banks in a targeted and intelligence-driven approach is critical in getting a fuller picture of the unlawful activities involved on the person that is a subject of investigation.”
Since it was established in December 2019 Samlit has played a big role in improving the collaboration between banks, the FIC, the Special Investigating Unit, the SA Revenue Service , the Asset Forfeiture Unit, and the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and its Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks). It has also played a critical role in helping financial institutions improve their systems for tracing financial flows from the illicit wildlife trade, a practice that FATF said in June 2020 could be worth as much as $23bn a year.
“SA is a source country for a lot of the illicit wildlife trade,” said Khanyile. “If we don’t fight this fight we won’t have any wildlife or tourists left in future.”
Khanyile says Samlit is working with nongovernment organisations active in the conservation arena to share knowledge with Samlit on the illicit wildlife trade, though she is reluctant to name them for safety and security reasons. The July murder of Timbavati ranger Anton Mzimba highlights the lengths to which poachers and those involved in the illegal wildlife trade are willing to go to further their ends.
Gerald Byleveld, head of financial compliance at Investec who also leads the illegal wildlife trade working group at Samlit, says the practice also has negative socioeconomic effects. That’s not only because it lures people from vulnerable communities but also because the negative effect on wildlife can hurt livelihoods.
“Communities that live in and around tourism meccas like the Kruger National Park could really see their livelihoods decimated if the illegal wildlife trade is not stopped,” he says.
Col Johan Jooste, the National Section Commander of Wildlife Trafficking at the Hawks, says targeting money laundering also has practical legal consequences for those involved. That’s because in many countries the laws against illegal wildlife trade may not be highly developed for all species, leaving loopholes open for criminals.
“Money laundering provides an alternative means of prosecuting, which changes the whole ball game in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade,” he says. “For example if abalone from SA is transported to Tanzania, which doesn’t have the same stringent fisheries regulations, syndicates can use that to escape sanction.”
However, by far the biggest plus in tracking the financial flows linked to the illegal wildlife trade is that it allows authorities to go after the masterminds, rather than the foot soldiers on the ground doing the poaching who are easily replaceable if arrested.
“We want to be able to use the information that is sitting with the banks and follow the money to the kingpins so we can disrupt organised crime,” says Khanyile. “These criminals don’t only operate in SA. They operate throughout the region and internationally.”
At the global UfW summit in October Prince William commended the work done by Samlit as an example of the collective response required to combat the illegal wildlife trade. He also highlighted the formation of the regional ESAAMLG partnership, in collaboration with UfW, as the first international public-private partnership for tackling financial crime.
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