IEASA National - News

FIC checking up on estate agents   Article Date :2 Apr 2007 Are you complying with the Financial Intelligence Centre Act? The Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) has begun checking up on estate agencies, to make sure that they are complying with the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA), which has been in operation for the past four years. Dr Willie Marais, national president of the Institute of Estate Agents of South Africa, says that firms are receiving letters from the FIC, asking them to submit copies of their written internal compliance procedures within five working days. Some estate agencies have also been visited by FIC inspectors. "In terms of the FICA, every estate agency, like banks and other 'accountable institutions', must devise written procedures for complying with its obligations under the Act," says Marais. "It must train all its agents and staff, and appoint an in-house compliance officer to ensure that all the requirements are complied with. The Act applies to all estate agencies, irrespective of whether they are large national groups or one-person home-based businesses, and whether they have been in business for a hundred years, or opened their doors only yesterday." Compliance requirements include verifying new clients' identities and addresses before doing business with them, obtaining copies of their identity documents (and, in the case of companies, CCs and trusts their registration documents), keeping them on file for five years, and reporting any "suspicious or unusual transactions" that involve or appear to involve money laundering, tax evasion, or the financing of terrorist activities. "To judge from some of the enquiries we're receiving as a result of the letters from the FIC, there are some firms out there, especially small ones, which have been ignoring FICA and have now been caught out," says Marais. Marais says that the Institute, through its regional centres, has presented many workshops on FICA compliance over the past four years. When the Act was introduced in 2003, the Estate Agency Affairs Board, which is the industry's regulating authority, published a model manual which estate agencies could adopt as their own. Estate agencies which would like a copy should contact the EAAB on (011) 731-5600. The EAAB website is: www.eaab.org.za. The FIC website is: www.fic.gov.za CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE MAIN NEWS PAGE