Ramaphosa voices support for FICA bill

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday voiced fullsome support for the Financial Centre Intelligence Amendment bill, which the National Assembly has sent back to President Jacob Zuma with minor changes after he refused for six months to sign it.

Ramaphosa told the chamber he wished to commend MPs for unanimously approving the draft law that would enhance scrutiny of the politically prominent and their families when they transact through the financial sector.

He stressed that the FICA bill would also help to combat money-laundering and illicit financial flows from terrorist activities and said as such the ruling party welcomed it.

Section 45 of the bill, which allows for warrantless searches in narrowly prescribed circumstances, underwent rigorous review after Zuma flagged it as potentially unconstitutional in November and referred it back to Parliament’s standing committee on finance.

It was first approved by the National Assembly in May last year.

The wide consensus in public hearings was that the bill was constitutional but the committee nonetheless implemented changes suggested by Advocate Jeremy Gauntless to make the limitations on such searches more explicit.

But the committee also, however, heard an extraordinary submission from the head of the Progressive Professionals Forum, Jimmy Manyi, who described the bill as an attempt to blacklist ANC donors and bankrupt the ruling party.

Asked about this by Economic Freedom Fighters’s deputy leader Floyd Shivambu, Ramaphosa said he did not know what Manyi meant.

“The ANC does not rely on laundered money, the ANC for its finances does not rely on money that is filtered into the country through money-laundering and terrorist activities.

“It is for that reason that we support for this bill and we also applaud everybody who voted for this bill. I don’t know what he is talking about and clearly he is not talking for the ANC that I know that I lead.”

Ramaphosa, the deputy leader of the ruling party, used another opposition question about his business interests to reinforce his anti-graft message.

“If you want to make money, make money doing business, not dealing with government entities,” he said, adding that he did not enter politics to “loot” state resources.

He would not be drawn on whether and when Zuma would sign the FICA bill. Opposition leaders on Tuesday, in gloves off declarations on the bill, urged Zuma not to delay the bill further, and some openly accused him of looting state coffers through his ties with prominent business people.

“Let us leave it to the president and all of us hope that he is going to be able to sign the bill,” Ramaphosa said, after stressing that it would bring South Africa into line with international regulatory standards in the finance sector.

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