Cape Town – Opposition parties are playing “petty politics” with the issue of greylisting, as South Africans have not yet felt its negative impact, says Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana.
South Africa was greylisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in February this year for “not having done enough to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism”.
According to EWN, Godongwana was responding to a parliamentary debate initiated by the DA. He said opposition parties had slammed the government for not doing enough to deal with corruption decisively, which he labelled “petty politics”.
“We have not seen any negative reaction by corresponding financial institutions to our institutions. What we largely have is a politicisation of the problem, rather than a focus on the resolution of the problem. Even though we don’t think that greylisting has itself posed any significant problem yet,” he said.
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The Citizen reported Godongwana said the government had plans to exit the greylist by next year.
“Having legal tools available to identify and combat money-laundering is not by itself enough. We also need to put up our game with respect to enforcing the laws, identifying wrongdoers and prosecuting them successfully.”
He cited State Capture as one of the reasons for the weakening of country’s law enforcement institutions, but he said the government was making efforts to address that.
“We are making progress in addressing these weaknesses, but this is not the work of the day even with leadership that are not tainted by state corruption, it takes time to build the skills and capacity,” he said.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
