Two years and counting: SA still stuck on financial greylist

South Africa has still not done enough to exit a list of countries that are not fully compliant with global anti-money laundering and terrorist financing standards.The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a Paris-based watchdog, announced on Friday that South Africa remains on its greylist of countries under increased monitoring.This means that South Africa still has "strategic deficiencies" in how it fights counter-money laundering, terrorist financing, and proliferation financing.The decision was largely expected, with analysts saying they doubted SA had done enough to exit the list.SA was added to the greylist index two years ago, in February 2023. While some hoped the country could speedily exit the list, this has been pushed back as the scope of the work to be done became clear.At the conclusion of a three-day meeting in Paris this week, the FATF said that SA had "taken steps" towards ensuring authorities have timely access to up-to-date information on the beneficial ownership of companies. It also said it had taken note of the fact that SA was applying sanctions to groups and companies that were not providing this information.But the country still has more to do, and notably needs to show a "sustained increase" in investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering, as well as terrorist financing activities.Looking to October Peter Attard Montalto, an analyst at Krutham (formerly Intellidex), previously told News24 Business he thinks SA may be able to finally exit the list in October given how the FATF's cycle of reviews and updates works.After the announcement was made on Friday evening, Treasury said South Africa was now deemed to have addressed or largely addressed 20 of the 22 action items in its action plan. 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 greylist in October 2025," it said.

Two years and counting: SA still stuck on financial greylist

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Two years and counting: SA still stuck on financial greylist

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