Cape Town - The Hawks, the Directorate of Priority Crime Investigation, together with SABRIC and the Digital and Financial Forensics Analysis Centre, have launched the Section 205 Digital Subpoena initiative which will be key in combating financial crime locally and even abroad and in cases of acts of terrorism.
In a bid to curb financial sector crime, bank records will now be able to subpoena digitally.
The successful launch of the Section 205 digital subpoena project follows the establishment, last year, of the Digital and Financial Forensic Analysis Centre for the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks).
The centre is a collaborative effort between the Hawks, the Banking Association South Africa (BASA), and the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (SABRIC), and is part of the partnership between government and business , which is led by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Key benefits include advanced training for senior investigators in financial forensic analysis skills, state-of-the-art software and hardware and full technical support to the Hawks to assist them in investigating financial crimes, such as money laundering and terrorism financing.
The National Head for the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, Lieutenant General Godfrey Lebeya said during a press conference this week at the launch of the digital subpoena system that 782 law enforcement officers were trained to work with bank crime analysis.
“The digital Section 205 subpoena, which allows the DPCI to serve subpoenas for bank records electronically, will assist in bringing DPCI (The Hawks) investigators closer to those they are seeking; and help ensure that the financial trail leads to the recovery of assets bought with money amassed from ill-gotten gains.
“So far, 58 DPCI members on boarded with the forensic centre, 147 cases and 910 exhibits were acquired and processed, 114 bank statements in PDF format were converted, verified and analysed, 782 law enforcement officers have been trained on bank statement analysis, 68 DPCI, Investigators, Digital Forensic Investigators and Financial analysts were trained over two days on 11 modules, covering Conducting Forensic Investigation, Digital Forensics and Financial Analysis.”
The SABRIC CEO, Nischal Mewalall explained that this advancement would help with international fraud syndicates.
“BASA, Business Against Crime South Africa as the representative of the banking industry and SABRIC as the implementing agency, embarked on this project because South Africa’s grey listing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) highlighted deficiencies in combating financial crime and money laundering.
“While South African banks largely comply with international standards and require no FATF mandated reforms, they could not stand to one side when the country’s economic interests are being hampered.”
Another speaker, Graham Wright, CEO of Business Against Crime South Africa (BASA) detailed that the partnership would secure more convictions in the fight against financial crime.
“The entities in this partnership agreed to establish the Joint Initiative on Crime and Corruption (JICC) to co-ordinate and monitor the delivery of collaborative interventions intended, in the short-term, to curtail acts of criminality and vandalism, and to support Government’s existing long-term efforts to modernise and streamline the criminal justice system.