Carrim: BBC, PPF don't speak for ANC on FIC Bill

Cape Town – The Black Business Council (BBC) and Progressive Professionals Forum (PPF) don’t speak for the ANC. They may be comrades, but they’re not structures of the ruling party, said Yunis Carrim, ANC MP and chairperson of Parliament’s finance committee.

The Standing Committee on Finance on Wednesday was continuing deliberations on the Financial Intelligence Centre Amendment (Fica) Bill after having heard responses from National Treasury following the previous week’s public hearings.

READ: Heated public hearings into FIC Bill              

President Jacob Zuma sent the bill back to Parliament in November last year, citing constitutional reservations about the section dealing with warrantless searches.

The finance committee hosted another round of public hearings last week, inviting stakeholders to make submissions on Section 45B(1C), which is in question.

Three senior counsel members – Advocates Ishmael Semenya, Jeremy Gauntlett and Lawson Naidoo (representing the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution) - said in their submissions that the piece of legislation is indeed constitutional.

However, both Gauntlett and Semenya suggested that the specific clause in the bill could be tightened to reduce the scope for constitutional challenges.

The BBC, represented by Danisa Baloyi, and the PPF, represented by Mzwanele Manyi, in their submissions made a number of assertions, such as that the bill would grant banks too much power and that it would ‘destroy democracy’ in South Africa.

Manyi also said that the government ‘misled’ Parliament about the true intention of the bill, which he argued was to exclusively target and clamp down on politically exposed persons, who by implication will be black Africans.

READ: What is the FIC Bill all about?

On Wednesday, however, Carrim said the assertions by the PPF were not true. “I want to make that clear. This committee extensively changed the original bill and had extensive deliberations on it.”

No legal opinion

Speaking on behalf of National Treasury, deputy director general Ismail Momoniat reiterated on Wednesday that the submissions by the PPF and BBC were not made by a practising attorney or an advocate, but by a political analyst.

He highlighted a number of misconceptions in the BBC and PPF’s arguments, among others that the impact of FIC will mostly be felt by black business.

“This concern is based on anecdotal evidence, and is not supported by actual factual evidence that has been provided,” Momoniat said.

The allegation that banks will act as “police, prosecutor and judge”, Momoniat said, is also misplaced as the legislation imposes duties on a number of sectors, such as insurers and legal firms – not only banks.

Their other statement, that banks are “outside of the net” of regulation in terms of the bill, is also not true, Momoniat said.

READ: SA banks becoming battleground in Zuma war - analysts

“South Africa’s banking sector is highly regulated and the ‘Treat Customers Fairly’ provision is a major objective under the forthcoming Twin Peaks Bill.”

‘Banks do discriminate’

Carrim reacted, saying that banks in some instances do discriminate against black business – an allegation previously made by the BBC’s Baloyi.

“You can say what you like, but in some or other measure the banks are discriminating against black Africans in particular. Lower income earners are disproportionately African. They’re less likely to lend to someone in the lower income category,” Carrim said.

“It’s reasonable to suggest that when banks close the accounts of individuals, they should give that person an explanation.”