The Banking Council of South Africa was disappointed by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s refusal to amend the Financial Intelligence Centre Act for low-risk clients, a spokeswoman said on Monday.
”We really want to discuss the whole thing with them. We are running out of time,” said communications manager Claire Gebhart-Mann.
The council objected to Manuel’s opinion that the regulations requiring banks to identify their clients were sufficiently accommodating. In Parliament on Friday he said any problems experienced must be due to misunderstandings.
On the contrary, said Gebhart-Mann, the requirement that every single South African bank customer be re-identified exceeded all international standards.
”We don’t know why it has to be so onerous. We feel the legislation needs to be tweaked.”
Money laundering expert Louis de Koker agreed that it was not necessary — and wasteful of time and money — to chase after a residential address for each and every client.
The banking council had earlier asked Manuel to extend the June 30 deadline for the re-identification of clients, but also to allow for some leeway in identifying rural and poor clients, who were often unable to provide the rigorous proof of address required by the regulations.
”We ask that ID documents be sufficient for low risk clients,” said Gebhart-Mann.
Manuel should announce an extension to the deadline later this week, said Gebhart-Mann, but he was unsympathetic to the plight of the banks, which were struggling to get positive proof of residential address from their 17-million or so clients.
Asked why the banks were only now, three weeks before the deadline, objecting to the regulations, Gebhard-Mann said the banks had been aware of the possible problems ”right from day one.
”When the legislation was passed we did raise these issues. We have tried for the past 18 months.”
She said she hoped the minister would be willing to discuss the issue with them. – Sapa