I think that's a translation of a passage by Honoré de Balzac: "Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait."
The French passage has a nice wit to it: "The secret of a great fortune without apparent origin is a forgotten crime, because it has been done properly."
Likely South America, as it's the abbreviation corporate directories use for offices in that region. South Africa would probably be ZA, which comes from the Dutch, Zuid-Afrika.