The Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) is South Africa’s national centre for the gathering, analysis and dissemination of financial intelligence. The FIC was established in 2003 through the promulgation of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act 2001 (38 of 2001) FIC Act) to identify proceeds of crime, combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The FIC reports to the Minister of Finance and to Parliament.

In protecting the financial system, the FIC’s primary activities as set out in its founding legislation, are to: process, analyse, interpret and retain information disclosed to and obtained by the FIC; inform, advise, co-operate with and make its financial intelligence products available to investigating authorities supervisory bodies, intelligence services and SARS to facilitate the country’s administration and enforcement of law; supervise and enforce compliance with the FIC Act in affected institutions and by individuals not regulated or supervised by a supervisory body, or where the supervisory body is unable to act; exchange information with similar bodies in other countries; monitor and give guidance to accountable and reporting institutions, supervisory bodies and individuals regarding their compliance with the FIC Act; implement a registration system for all affected institutions and individuals; annually review the implementation of the FIC Act and report on this to the Minister of Finance.

The FIC Act establishes a regulatory framework of compliance control measures, which requires certain categories of business (defined as schedule 1 in the FIC Act) to take steps regarding: registration with the FIC; client identification, verification and record-keeping; appointment of compliance officers; training employees on compliance; reflecting their organisation’s compliance structures and filing statutory reports with the FIC. The Act also requires all businesses to report suspicious and unusual financial transactions.