Mr. Christopher Malan | Financial Intelligence Centre
Executive Manager of Compliance and Prevention
Mr Christopher Cyril Martin Malan is Executive Manager of the Compliance and Prevention Division at the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC), the national financial intelligence unit in South Africa, with responsibility for monitoring the national state of supervision, and inspections, by supervisory bodies and the state of compliance of accountable and affected persons, in terms of the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, 2001, as amended (the FIC Act 2001).
He is co-chair of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Beneficial Ownership Transparency (IDC BOT) (a Cabinet endorsed IDC) to design and implement a national BOT registry framework in South Africa.
Mr Malan has designed the strategic and operational framework for the public private financial information sharing partnership, comprising the FIC, Prudential Authority, registered banks, SA Banking Association, and SA Banking Risk Information Centre, operationalised as the South African Anti Money Laundering Integrated Taskforce (SAMLIT), in December 2019.
In October 2020, Mr Malan led the Anti-Corruption Task Team (ACTT), now known as the National Priority Crime Operational Committee (NPCOC), task team of senior officials to investigate and report on the establishment of a State Forensic Capability (SFC), to bolster South Africa’s capacity to combat financial crime, corruption, and money laundering through a special shared services forensic capability unit in the ACTT. In August 2022 the ACTT endorsed the SFC Task Team report proposing the establishment of a SFC with the primary focus on high-end, complex financial crime cases involving corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing, which will function as a shared services forensic capability, to be located within the FIC. The FIC established the SFC Division in the FIC on 1 May 2023.
Mr Malan is a former National Treasury Chief Director of Financial Regulation (1999-2004), who finalised the AML/CFT policy and regulatory regime, including stakeholder consultations, oversaw the passage of the FIC Bill through Parliament, which became the FIC Act 2001, and advised then Minister of Finance, the Honourable Dr Trevor Manuel, on the establishment of the FIC. He transferred to the FIC in December 2004.
Mr Malan, as financial sector expert, participated in the FATF Mutual Evaluation Assessment of Australia in 2005, and the FATF Mutual Evaluation Assessment of Finland, in 2018. He is member of the South African delegation to the FATF.
Mr Christopher Malan holds the BA (Political Studies & Roman Dutch Law), LLB and LLM (Advanced Company Law & Maritime Law) degrees, and Postgraduate Diploma in Tax Law (University of Cape Town), and Postgraduate Diploma in Economic Principles (SOAS, University of London). He attended the Program on the Global Financial System: Structure, Crisis and Reform (JFK School of Government, Harvard University).
He is a former attorney, with right of appearance in the High Court of South Africa. He has been a certified anti-money laundering specialist (CAMS) of the Association of Anti-Money Laundering Specialists, since 2013.