South Africans now face the risk of having to deal with intrusive and onerous requirements by their banks
Well, that didn’t take long. The FM can report the sighting of the first bank account freezing brought about by the
According to most experts in the anti-money-laundering field, South Africa was not short of the necessary laws and regulations to keep the FATF happy; it was just severely short of the capacity to enforce them.
According to the International Monetary Fund, countries on the FATF greylist typically suffer an average net loss of 7.68% of capital flow relative to GDP. Portfolio inflows and general investment inflows are expected to decline and foreign banks may become reticent about doing business with us. My friend’s account was frozen when he deposited a dividend payment from a large, reputable, JSE-listed mining company. The payment triggered a frenzy of requests for satisfactory proof of the origin of the funds. Over a few days three different sets of information were requested. Some were outrageously intrusive — the tax return of the dividend-paying company — some could not be released due to the Protection of Personal Information Act and some did not exist.
After a few days, and without notice, my friend’s account was frozen. His entreaties were ignored, there was no appeal or any kind of recognised process to have his case reviewed, and so he was forced to ask his attorney to intervene. “No transparency, no clear process, no appeal, just ‘Deliver to us the documents we demand, however unreasonable or indeed impossible, or we cut off your access to your funds’,” was how my traumatised friend described the situation.
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