
Infrastructure investor fined R1.7 million for FICA breaches
The FSCA identified serious lapses in Harith General Partners’ risk management, client due diligence, sanctions screening, and employee vetting.

The FSCA identified serious lapses in Harith General Partners’ risk management, client due diligence, sanctions screening, and employee vetting.

The South African Reserve Bank cites deficiencies in Access Forex’s RMCP, customer verification, and staff training.

The FSCA found both firms lacked effective risk management capabilities, including deficient RMCPs, poor customer due diligence, and failures to screen against the sanctions lists.

The updated guidance gives concrete examples of compliance failures and explicitly states that poorly documented RMCPs may be treated as non-compliant.

Ensure registrations and filings are finalised by 5pm on 8 September and back up all records – the old system will be retired after the upgrade.

The sessions will cover institutions’ regulatory reporting obligations and establishing beneficial ownership.

Institutions that are wrongly registered as ‘business entities with a reporting obligation’ face being sanctioned by the FIC.

HBZ was fined an effective R7.5m, Citibank’s fine was fully suspended, and Bank of Taiwan was reprimanded.

The owner of MIKA Finansiële Dienste shares four key takeaways after successfully remediating the deficiencies in its RMCP.

The FATF’s mutual evaluation in April 2027 will drill down into how well AML/CFT measures work in practice rather than just ticking technical boxes.

South Africa now awaits an on-site visit by the FATF Africa Joint Group – paving the way for an anticipated exit from the grey list at the October plenary.

What the Authority expects from financial services providers when it conducts Financial Intelligence Centre Act inspections.

An RMCP must set out the processes for identifying, investigating, and reporting suspicious transactions, and for screening clients against the sanctions lists.

An inspection identified inadequate implementation of the RMCP and deficient customer due diligence processes.

The Centre, through inspections and compliance monitoring, will test an RMCP against the legislative requirements.

Absa was fined R7m for inadequate customer due diligence and R3m for delays and closures of transaction monitoring alerts.

The Financial Intelligence Centre issues a stern reminder to designated non-financial entities – particularly legal practitioners and estate agents – to file their overdue risk and compliance returns.