SOUTH AFRICA'S RECOGNITION OF HAMAS POSES A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER OF TERRORIST FINANCING RISK TO THE COUNTRY'S FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

The love affair between the African National Congress (ANC) and HAMAS, which is a designated (and sanctioned) global terrorist organization in several Western countries, notably the United States, raises risk levels in South Africa's financial sector and requires increased sensitivity to possible unwitting exposure to terrorist financing, when matters of international banking are concerned.

There are multiple issues that compliance officers at the country's major banks must be constantly aware of:
(1) Are exports to the Middle East really a supporter of Hamas or the ANC providing material support to a sanctioned terrorist organization?
(2) Is the movement of funds abroad by a Politically Exposed Person (PEP) the transfer of bribes payments made by Hamas to a government official or politician, now finding their way into a Western bank?
(3) Is that obscure small company, opening an account at your bank, in truth and in fact really a front for a terrorist operation?
(4) Could compliance malpractice in interdicting funds connected to Hamas result in an OFAC sanction to your bank, blocking all access to the American financial structure, with the resulting loss of competitiveness threatening its long-term existence?

Compliance officers at banks in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban, whose clients are engaged in substantial international trade and commerce, must defend daly against these threats, the failure of which to do so could prove fatal when exposed by Western regulatory bodies or law enforcement agencies. They require special practical training on advanced money laundering techniques to be able to identify and interdict those methods in real-time, and to coordinate with law enforcement so that the laundrymen are arrested and convicted, reducing the banks' risk to terrorist financing charges abroad to acceptable levels. Presently, such education and training is not being conducted, but if such steps are not taken, there will be, sooner or later, consequences imposed from abroad.