US and SA treasuries in security talks
The treasury departments of SA and the US have collaborated in bringing together representatives of central banks, private banks and financial supervisory bodies in Sub-Saharan Africa, for a twoday meeting in Cape Town to discuss measures to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
The treasury departments of SA and the US have collaborated in bringing together representatives of central banks, private banks and financial supervisory bodies in Sub-Saharan Africa, for a two-day meeting in Cape Town to discuss measures to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
The dialogue aimed to provide an avenue for co-operation and to facilitate dialogue on money laundering and terrorism financing, which can negatively affect the integrity of the banking sector in the region.
SA is beefing up its regime to combat money laundering and terrorism financing to meet the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and hopefully avoid a greylisting which would have dire consequences for the economy.
Treasury acting directorgeneral Ismail Momoniat said in an interview that engagements with other jurisdictions on how to combat money laundering and terrorism financing would help SA to be proactive in strengthening its regime.
“It will certainly help us to prepare our own risk assessment and strengthen it,” he said. It was also important to understand the US regime and for the US to understand the development consequences of its standards. The US was important, Momoniat noted as most trade took place through the dollar which involved correspondent relationships with US banks.
SA institutions represented in the discussions included the Reserve Bank’s Prudential Authority, the Financial Intelligence Centre and the Banking Association SA.
The six-member US delegation was led by US treasury deputy secretary and head of the US FATF delegation Scott Rembrandt. It included deputy director of the treasury’s financial crimes enforcement network Jimmy Kirby, policy adviser in the office of terrorist financing and financial crimes Sam Barnett, and senior policy adviser in that office Benjamin Mossberg.
CORRUPTION
In his introductory remarks, Rembrandt said the impetus for the dialogue came from the March visit to SA and several other African countries by US treasury undersecretary Brian Nelson. Rembrandt noted that US President Joe Biden had identified corruption as one of the biggest national security threats facing the US and the government had worked hard in implementing an anticorruption strategy. That required fundamental changes to the outdated anti-money laundering and combating terrorism financing regime. There were still some vulnerabilities that needed to be addressed.
Topics discussed during the dialogue included understanding risk, legislative and regulatory initiatives, correspondent banking relationships, supervision of money transfers, ransomware, cyber-enabled Covid19 fraud, national risk assessments and illicit finance risks.