South African authorities have ‘addressed or largely addressed 20 of the 22 action items’ related to the country’s grey-listing by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the country’s National Treasury has said.
In a statement, the National Treasury highlighted the country’s continued progress toward exiting the grey list. This puts it in a strong position for potential removal from the global ‘dirty money’ list in October this year [2025].
“The FATF today [February 21 2025] announced the upgrade of four of the six outstanding action items [related to SA’s greylisting] at the conclusion of its latest plenary meetings in Paris, France,” it said.
This means that ‘two items remain to be addressed in the next reporting period, which runs from March 2025 to June 2025.’ According to the statement, successfully completing these steps would allow South Africa to be considered for removal from the FATF grey list in October 2025.
“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.
“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.”
In a statement issued on February 21 2025, following its Paris plenary which for the first time included African countries Kenya and Senegal, the FATF addressed South Africa’s progress, noting:
“Since February 2023, when South Africa made a high-level political commitment to collaborate with the FATF and ESAAMLG to enhance the effectiveness of its AML/CFT regime, the country has taken steps to strengthen its framework. This includes demonstrating that all supervisory bodies enforce effective and proportionate sanctions, ensuring that authorities have timely access to accurate and up-to-date beneficial ownership (BO) information on legal entities and arrangements, and applying penalties for violations of beneficial ownership obligations.
South Africa should continue implementing its action plan to resolve its remaining strategic deficiency by demonstrating a sustained increase in investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering cases, as well as the full range of terrorist financing activities, in line with its risk profile.”
🇰🇪 REGULATIONS | Kenya Invited to Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Working Groups for One Year Amid Crypto Regulation Progress
The Kenyan delegation will be defending the country’s progress to exit the grey list.https://t.co/YoUVcKftOc @FATFNews @FRC_Kenya pic.twitter.com/jJ6sZoKPUA
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) February 19, 2025
As reported by BitKE, South Africa was added to the greylist in February 2023, together with Nigeria, a move that was seen as a setback for Africa’s largest economies.
Nigeria 🇳🇬, South Africa 🇿🇦 Placed under FATF Grey List – A Total of 8 African Nations Now Under Scrutiny
Interestingly, Botswana was grey listed by FATF before its removal in early 2022 after passing a virtual assets bill to regulate trading of cryptohttps://t.co/wOOrKihLyM
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) February 28, 2023
Among the steps taken to get off the list include the introduction of cryptocurrency regulations, which has seen South Africa provide operating licenses to over 200 crypto firms.
🇿🇦REGULATION | South Africa Has Now Approved 248 Crypto Providers Out of 420 Received So Far, Only 9 Applications Rejected
This post identifies two key areas that resulted from applications getting rejected by the FSCA.https://t.co/9osgvhErjt @fscasouthafrica pic.twitter.com/2fvVgBZoty
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) December 16, 2024
Other African countries on the list include:
- Burkina Faso
- Cameroon
- Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
- Mali
- Mozambique
- Senegal
- South Africa
- South Sudan
- Tanzania
- Uganda
Kenya and Namibia were added to the list a year later.
🇰🇪🇳🇦REGULATION | Kenya 🇰🇪 and Namibia 🇳🇦 Latest African Countries Added to Financial Action Task Force (FATF) Grey List
According to FATF, Kenya primarily faces risks associated with flows of money connected to terrorism financing from both domestic and international sources,… pic.twitter.com/zsHXN1vCCC
— BitKE (@BitcoinKE) February 26, 2024
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