A recent media statement from National Treasury provided an update on the country’s greylisting as at February 2025. In February 2023, South Africa was identified as a jurisdiction under increased monitoring by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and placed on the FATF greylist. Over the last two years, South Africa has made significant progress in improving its Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime. In its latest plenary meetings, the FATF has upgraded four of the six outstanding action items for South Africa. South Africa has now addressed or largely addressed 20 out of 22 action items in its Action Plan.
South Africa still has two action items that remain to be addressed by the next reporting period which runs from March 2025 to June 2025. These items are:
- Demonstrate a sustained increase in investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering, particularly involving professional money laundering networks/enablers and third-party money laundering, in line with its risk profile.
- Demonstrate a sustained increase in the effective identification, investigation, and prosecution of the full range of terrorist financing (TF) activities, consistent with its TF risk profile.
The country aims to address both outstanding action items by June 2025 to enable an exit from the greylist by October 2025.