WITH South African authorities having “addressed or largely addressed 20 of the 22 action items” related to its grey-listing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the country is effectively being considered for a delisting from the global ‘dirty money’ list in October this year.
The National Treasury noted in a statement on Friday the country’s further progress in getting off the grey list.
“The FATF today [21 February] announced the upgrade of four of the six outstanding action items [related to SA’s grey-listing] at the conclusion of its latest plenary meetings in Paris, France,” it said.
This leaves “two items to be addressed in the next reporting period that runs from March 2025 to June 2025. This would enable South Africa to be considered for delisting from the FATF grey list in October 2025,” it highlighted.
“The FATF plenary adopted the report and recommendations of the Africa Joint Group on 21 February 2025 and noted South Africa’s progress in its public statement,” National Treasury noted.
“National Treasury welcomes the efforts of financial and non-financial regulators and beneficial ownership registries and its law enforcement users, in securing upgrades for the four action items they were directly responsible for in the current reporting cycle,” it said
“Treasury also notes the ongoing efforts by all the law enforcement agencies to demonstrate the significant progress in respect of the two action items not yet upgraded, relating to the investigation and prosecution of serious and complex money laundering and of terrorist financing,” it added.
“South Africa continues to address both outstanding action items by June 2025 to enable an exit from greylisting by October 2025. Our investigation and prosecution teams are working closely in terms of a prosecution-guided investigation strategy to ensure that we demonstrate the sustained progress as required by FATF,” said National Treasury.
“These improvements are critical not just for getting off the grey list, but, critically, for strengthening the fight against crime and corruption,” added National Treasury.
The FATF statement issued on Friday after its Paris plenary states the following in relation to South Africa: “Since February 2023, when South Africa made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and ESAAMLG to strengthen the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime, South Africa has taken steps towards improving its AML/CFT regime including by demonstrating that all supervisors apply effective, proportionate, and effective sanctions, ensuring competent authorities have timely access to accurate and up to date BO [beneficial ownership] information on legal persons and arrangements and applying sanctions for breaches of violation by legal persons to beneficial ownership obligations.
“South Africa should continue to work on implementing its action plan to address its remaining strategic deficiency on demonstrating a sustained increase in investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering and the full range of TF activities in line with its risk profile.” – moneyweb.c0.za
