South Africa\u2019s financial markets regulator is ramping up its operations to combat an explosion in online scams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Financial Sector Conduct Authority will spend R200 million over the next 18 months to build up the supervisory muscle to beef up monitoring and enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The investment is the \u201clargest IT reorganisation\u201d the FSCA has had to date, Commissioner Unathi Kamlana said in an interview on Wednesday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The watchdog is also recruiting experts \u201cwith a specific focus on crypto supervision\u201d and the ability to probe \u201ccrypto-related scams,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Africa is battling rising attacks, with verification platform Sumsub recording a 1,200% increase in the number of deep fakes in Africa\u2019s most industrialised nation between 2022 and 2023. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That vastly outpaced the 450% increase elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kamlana said he expects to lift agency staffing to the mid-700s over the next three years from 680 currently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The country has been the backdrop to several of the world\u2019s largest crypto scams that resulted in the disappearance of billions of dollars in investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This includes 70,000 Bitcoin vanishing in 2021 from a platform called Africrypt, run by two brothers who quickly fled the country, and a fraudulent marketing scheme that led to a $3.4 billion fine in a US court in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The FSCA undertook 1,350 enforcements in the 12 months through March and imposed fines of 120 million rand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s a steep decline from the previous year\u2019s record 943 million rand in fines, which it said was a mark of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The agency\u2019s actions \u201chave served as an effective mechanism of deterrence,\u201d Kamlana said. \u201cWe\u2019ve focused on those that give the maximum kind of impact.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa\u2019s financial markets regulator is ramping up its operations to combat an explosion in online scams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":779521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[853,19625],"class_list":["post-831051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-south-africa","tag-the-financial-sector-conduct-authority-fsca"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831051"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":831055,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831051\/revisions\/831055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}