Trade, Industry and Competition Minister Parks Tau has launched the upgraded beneficial ownership register, through which accredited users from law enforcement agencies can get beneficial ownership information in real-time.

The new model will expose ownership links and make tracing easier for law enforcement officials.

This is part of an inter-agency collaboration to enhance financial integrity and combat money laundering that will be implemented through the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC).

“The companies that the CIPC registers can be abused by people who set them up for the wrong reasons; shell structures, layered ownership, chains of entities designed so that no one can tell who is really in charge. The answer to secrecy is visibility.”

The purpose is to end a culture of disregard for accountability and transparency and to stop financial crime, he said during the launch of the Beneficial Ownership Disclosure Module for Law Enforcement Agencies.

“With the upgrade, investigators can take a single director and see every other entity that person is linked to, active or inactive. They can take an entity under investigation and connect it to every other entity in the CIPC database, not only those on the beneficial ownership register,” he said.

CIPC Commissioner Rory Voller said collaboration is important to ensure greater breakthroughs against financial crime.

“A new cycle of mutual evaluation is ahead of us, where the effectiveness report is due on October 19 to the Financial Action Task Force.

“Let us take advantage of the tools we have and the availability of this newly upgraded Beneficial Ownership Disclosure Module to achieve even more successful investigations and prosecutions and mitigate the risk of money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing,” he said.

Since the register opened in April 2023, the CPIC has received more than three-million beneficial ownership filings, covering local and international owners. It has concluded more than 618 investigations.

It has also issued more than 350 compliance notices to entities that did not comply, or that tried to abuse the system with false supporting information.

Further, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition will work to build a culture of transparency and accountability among corporate citizens.

“Government will keep the country off the grey list, and make South Africa a place where no one can hide behind a company. This collaboration between Treasury, the CIPC, the South African Revenue Service, the Financial Intelligence Centre, the South African Police Service, the National Prosecuting Authority and the private sector puts good data in the hands of the people who fight financial crime,” Tau said.