NDPP Shamila Batohi has told Parliament while SA has made big advances in meeting the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), there are indications that it has not yet ticked all the boxes.

A Business Day report notes that SA’s global reputation as having a financially secure regime will be in the balance next week when the FATF holds a plenary in Paris that will decide whether to put SA on a greylist of countries that fail to meet the required standards.

Batohi and the NPA have been involved in working on SA’s response to the FATF report which highlighted the lack of prosecutions of money laundering and terrorist financing cases.

Batohi said in a meeting of Parliament’s Justice Committee that SA had done a lot to avoid greylisting.

‘When one thinks of how far we have come as a country from 2019 and considering that we were hit by Covid-19 in-between, I think what we have been able to do as a country and recently under the guidance of Treasury – because there are a number of government departments involved in this process and certainly in terms of law enforcement – is nothing short of remarkable. But there is an indication that we will not tick all the boxes that FATF requires to be ticked but we are hoping that countries that vote on this at the end of the day will understand that greylisting SA at this point would perhaps be counterproductive to what the FATF is trying to achieve.’

She said that there would be parts of the NPA budget that could be used for other initiatives if SA was not greylisted ‘but that is being rather hopeful’.

Full Business Day report