ZIMBABWEAN REMITTANCES WORRY USA AND NOW FATF IS THREATENING TO GREYLIST SOUTH AFRICA.

UK and South African remittances to Zimbabwe by Zimbabweans in those diasporas, have become Zimbabwe’s biggest investment driver and sanction buster.

In the last 6 months, Zimbabwe has received from its citizens living abroad, $800 million officially from formal electronic remittances and over $1 billion in cash crossing physically through the borders. These foreign currency inflows have in turn driven construction, real estate, mining, agriculture, retail and other economic activities that are fueling Zimbabwe’s economic boom.

As a retaliation, the G7’s FATF (Financial Action Task Force) is threatening to greylist the South African financial system in October of this year, for among other things, not doing enough to curb cash transactions in its economy.

According to the FATF 2021 report, South Africa has continued to allow easy access to cash and this is fueling cross border remittancies to countries like Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Somalia (all countries under US sanctions) and other SADC countries where that cash is fueling terrorism.

This, of course, is an illogical argument when considering that Zimbabwe and most SADC countries have no links to terrorism. Secondly, US dollars form almost 30% ($2.1 trillion) of the world’s notes and 21% of those notes were printed between 2019 and now, but the FATF has never greylisted the US financial system for producing too many dollar notes which everyone knows the US uses to finance terrorism for oil, purchase of weapons from the US industrial military complex for terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

There is overwhelming evidence that the west is the biggest driver of terrorism, money laundering, drug trafficking (from the Opium Wars through to US control of Afghanistan’s opium fields and heroine trafficking, today) and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist states like Israel which has been condemned by the UN for crimes against humanity upon Palestinian civilians, women and children.

In 1989, the US government was found guilty by the ICJ for funding and arming Contra bandits (terrorists) to murder innocent civilians in Nicaragua. And this is before we go into how the US government is said to have created Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al Shabaab, Al Sunna in Mozambique and many other new terrorist organisations, to advance their geopolitical interests.

Albeit, we have never seen the United States being greylisted for funding drug trafficking, terrorism and moneylaundering; neither have we seen any other western country being listed for money laundering or organized crime, even after the western world has caused every economic depression in the world, including the worst banking crash of 2008, and the reason is simple.

According to a book (Treasury’s War. The Unleashing Of A New Era Of Financial Warfare) written by former US Treasury Director of Counter Terrorism, Juan Zarate; FATF and its money laundering guidelines, were created by his team after 911 (while he was still in the US Treasury) as economic weapons to enable the US government to extend its illegal unilateral sanctions, extraterritorially, in a manner that chokes development in countries the US government doesn’t like or those that seek to control and process their own strategic resources to the detriment of US economic interests.

It’s clear from the title of the book, that these rules were never meant to stop organized crime, terrorism, money laundering or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Surely, if they were, the countries that manufacture weapons and currencies used by terrorists, would be the first on the FATF list.

More critically, the FATF is particularly irate with the South African FIC (Financial Intelligence Center) for not creating enough transparency within the South African financial system by coercing lawyers, accountants and real estate agents in the republic, to expose beneficiaries of South African registered properties, trusts, special purpose vehicles, companies and juristic entities.

This is something they desperately need to empower the white controlled South African [apartheid] financial system, to target politically exposed blacks [Zimbabweans, South Africans and other non-neoliberal aligned Africans] or black business people who use these financial vehicles innovatively to leverage their businesses or to circumvent punishment without trial by illegal western sanctions and AMLCT (anti-money laundering and counter terrorism laws), which are designed to destroy black competitors.

This again is oxymoronic when considering that trusts and tax havens were created by the same western countries and most, if not all, tax havens are domicile in western controlled territories. Moreover, these tax havens and opaque financial vehicles exist for western countries to easily launder their proceeds of predicate crimes (crimes which generate proceeds that then require money laundering to move gains to other jurisdictions) like slavery, apartheid, colonialism, tax evasion, transfer pricing, weapons trafficking, drug trafficking, human trafficking, stealing of oil and plunder from third world countries.

Be that as it may, the South African financial system is being enjoined to use its racial discrimination culture and systems, to block the rise of African competitors by arbitrarily denying them financial tools through the arbitrary application of unilateral sanctions or AMLCT laws without due process.

Nothwithstanding, they face a stiff challenge from a legal case launched by ZASM (Zimbabwe Anti-Sanctions Movement) in the South African Gauteng High Court in February of this year.

The ZASM case is designed to address discrimination and extrajudicial punishment in the financial global system, by asking the South African courts to stop banks domicile in South Africa, from violating human rights and breaking the South African constitution by discriminately, arbitrarily, disproportionately and extrajudicially punishing innocent civilians (Zimbabweans or anyone else) by denying them the rights to enjoy banking services through the illegal implementation of unilateral sanctions, AMLCT laws or economic warfare, without trial or court orders, as they are doing with Zimbabwean citizens and the Guptas.

This is a really important case aimed at creating legal precedence to stop racist banks from persecuting, segregating, discriminating and excluding innovative or competitive black entrepreneurs and states from accessing banking services to fulfill the human right of economic development.

Complimenting the ZASM case, is the June 2022, South African Equality Court order that instructed Nedbank to reopen Sekunjalo’s bank accounts, after the bank arbitrarily closed them without trial or court order, on the premise of managing reputational risk in line with FATF guidelines after Sekunjalo was implicated in the Mpati Commission of Inquiry.

These are critical cases, in a country where apartheid banks continue to be above the law and they have entrenched white monopoly by deliberately curtailing the rise of black banks, black insurers, black miners, black energy providers, black construction companies and black industrialists through arbitrarily denying black and brown people banking licenses, loans, leverage, financial instruments, payment clearances or accounts to transact.

And now, with our former colonizers over reaching to try and use western unilateral sanctions in tandem with FATF guidelines (endorsed by our western trained African bankers), to control financial flows to African countries through the biased application of these FATF’s AMLCT guidelines and regulations by excluding undesired African competitors from the financial system, without trial (in contravention of the universal bill of human rights and the South African constitution); it is imperative that we the oppressed Africans fight against this racist imperialist, financial warfare, before the west destroys Africa’s competitiveness by continued manipulation of the global financial system.

More critically, our accounting officers in Africa must stop acquiescing to these imperialist western financial tools of oppression and the imposition of the white controlled apartheid [South African] banking system (that perpetuated crimes against humanity upon black people, without ever providing reparations) as the only African financial system the west recognizes as worthy of being a member of the 39 member G7, FATF and overlord of African banks.

Why in the world, would smart African bankers accept this imposition of apartheid bankers and unilateral AMLCT rules made by a racist institution [FATF] formed in 1989, by the enemies of Africa (former slave masters, colonizers and erstwhile plunderers), at the deliberate exclusion of Africans, Asians and South Americans?

Where is the benefit in Africans joining or accepting the unilateral rules made by such racist Anglo Saxon terrorists who still continue to dispossess, starve and kill Africans for their oil, minerals and inheritance?

Whose interests do our bankers think such a racist institution of money launderers and terrorist sponsors serves, by seeking transparency and compliance to AMLCT rules from only third world countries, yet all western countries advance their competitve advantage behind the veil of secrecy, innovation, murder, war, plunder, transfer pricing, under invoicing, tax evasion, organized crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking (slavery), primitive accumulation, money laundering, destroying competition and the maintenance of ownership of unjustly acquired wealth?

Rutendo Matinyarare Chairman of ZASM.

https://www.iamrutendo.online/post/zimbabwean-remittances-worry-usa-and-now-fatf-is-threatening-to-greylist-south-africa