National Treasury has welcomed the progress made by all agencies in ensuring South Africa now meets 16 of the 22 action items required for the country to exit the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list.

Only six action items remain and, while South Africa is working hard to address all outstanding action items by February 2025, “this remains a difficult challenge”, Treasury cautions.

“All relevant agencies and authorities must continue to make substantial progress, ensuring that these improvements are indeed both sustainable and effective,” it notes in a statement issued following the FATF Plenary announcing nine upgrades for South Africa.

South Africa is now left with one reporting cycle to address the remaining six action items.

Three of these relate to demonstrating a sustained increase in the investigation and prosecution of complex money laundering, terror financing and unlicensed cross-border money or value transfer services (MVTS).

The remaining three relate to the timely access of beneficial ownership information in respect of companies and trusts, and the imposition of remedial action and dissuasive sanctions by designated antimoney-laundering and terrorist financing (AML/CFT) supervisers.

If South Africa is successful in addressing all remaining action items in the next reporting cycle, the February 2025 FATF Plenary will authorise an on-site visit by the FATF Africa Joint Group to confirm their assessment on the progress of all action items. This would happen around May 2025.

If the on-site assessment results in a positive outcome, the FATF Africa Joint Group will recommend to the June 2025 FATF Plenary that South Africa be delisted from the FATF grey list.

However, if the FATF Africa Joint Group assesses that South Africa has not adequately addressed all remaining action items in February 2025, South Africa will be required to continue reporting back to the FATF Africa Joint Group every four months until all the action items have been addressed.

Hence, the exit from greylisting will be moved from June 2025 to October 2025, or later.

The interdepartmental committee chaired by Treasury is coordinating the process to exit greylisting, and has been reporting regularly to Cabinet, as well as the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security (JCPS) cluster.

Treasury says the committee has provided effective leadership and coordination to ensure the upgrading of action items related to outbound mutual legal assistance requests, seizure and confiscation of proceeds of crime, the implementation of a terror financing strategy and ensuring the effective implementation of targeted financial sanctions.

Treasury says it continues to oversee further progress in at least four of the six outstanding action items, including three related to investigations and prosecutions.