Intergovernmental organisation the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), on February 21, upgraded four of the six outstanding action items South Africa must undertake to be considered for delisting from the FATF greylist.

South Africa is now deemed to have addressed or largely addressed 20 of the 22 action items in its action plan, leaving two items to be addressed in the next reporting period that runs from March to June, National Treasury said in a statement.

This would enable South Africa to be considered for delisting from the FATF greylist in October, it added.

The two outstanding action items are investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering and terror-financing activities.

The decision by the FATF Plenary to extend the reporting cycle for the two action reflects the fact that these are the most demanding goals of every country’s systems for combating money laundering and terrorist financing, particularly since they require a country to demonstrate that the improvements made are sustained over successive reporting periods, Treasury noted.

Treasury further cited the ongoing efforts by all law enforcement agencies to demonstrate the significant progress in respect of the two remaining action items.

“South Africa continues to address both outstanding action items by June to enable an exit from greylisting by October. 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.”

“These improvements are necessary not just for getting off the greylist, but, critically, for strengthening the fight against crime and corruption,” Treasury emphasised.

Further, Treasury welcomed 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.

“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 terrorist financing activities in line with its risk profile,” the FATF said in a statement.

“Since February 2023, when South Africa made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group to strengthen the effectiveness of its anti-money laundering or countering of the financing of terrorism (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 beneficial ownership information on legal persons and arrangements and applying sanctions for breaches of violation by legal persons to beneficial ownership obligations,” the FATF said.