The decision to delist South Africa was taken at the conclusion of meetings of the FATF Plenary that took place over 22-24 October 2025 in Paris, France.

After South Africa was listed on the FATF greylist in February 2023, government worked tirelessly to address all the deficiencies that were identified by the FATF and which were reflected in the 22 Action Items in the Action Plan agreed between South Africa and the FATF.

The FATF is an intergovernmental organisation and finance watchdog that was established to combat money laundering, terrorist and proliferation financing, as well as other threats to the integrity of the international financial system.

It sets global standards for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, promotes the effective implementation of these standards, and conducts mutual evaluations of member countries to assess their compliance with the FATF Recommendations.

“Over the past 32 months, South Africa has engaged with a team of reviewers assigned by the FATF to assess progress against the Action Plan. This culminated in an on-site visit at the end of July 2025, when the assessors came to the country to confirm the sustainability of the reforms that had been reported to them,” National Treasury said on Friday.

This concluded with a meeting with Deputy Minister of Finance, Dr David Masondo, and Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Andries Nel, who assured the FATF of the South African Government’s political commitment to continue to sustainably improving the country’s Anti-Money Laundering and the Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) system.

“South Africa’s progress in addressing the AML/CFT deficiencies and exiting the FATF greylist represents a major policy and institutional achievement for the people of South Africa, particularly following the weakening of key law enforcement and other institutions during the state capture era.

“However, while exiting the greylist is an important milestone and a demonstration of South Africa’s commitment to rebuilding the rule of law, it is only start of a broader process to continue to strengthen key institutions, improve enforcement and governance processes, and ensure that such improvements are sustainable and that our systems become increasingly effective in combating money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing.

“Neither government agencies nor regulated entities in the private sector can afford to become complacent and stop improving. Instead, through public-private collaboration, they must continue to strengthen the AML/CFT system,” National Treasury emphasised.

The FATF requires countries that have exited the greylist to demonstrate continued commitment through measurable outcomes, including successful investigations, prosecutions, and sanctions as they relate to AML/CFT.

These actions will form the basis of the next FATF Mutual Evaluation for South Africa, which is expected to commence in the first half of 2026 and conclude in October 2027.

“To prevent being placed back on the greylist, it is important that systems of monitoring and enforcement work more efficiently and effectively, and that there are no gaps, by the time of the Mutual Evaluation. Preparations, in this regard, have already begun and we remain confident that South Africa will be able to sustain the progress made,” National Treasury said.

The department has congratulated Nigeria, Mozambique and Burkina Faso, which were also delisted from the FATF greylist.

The post SA exits FATF Greylist after successful reform efforts appeared first on ProtectionWeb.

The five-year tender (Tender 19/1/9/1/01 TR (24)) closed on 14 November 2024, marking a step forward in addressing sophisticated crime in South Africa as police have struggled with investigating organised crime and money laundering.

Traditional crime scene analyses will be boosted with new automated investigative tools. Improving on the long-established methods of examining fingerprints, the tender calls for fingerprint quality enhancement software able to accommodate the capturing of fingerprint and shoeprint images as well as enhancing the images. The solution must also provide a comprehensive audit trail and allow for the creation of a digital chart for presentation in court.

Additional facial/image quality enhancement software is required to enhance low resolution degraded still images of suspect faces to high quality images in order to enable facial identification. The software must be able to automatically generate a report detailing all the processing steps, settings and algorithm used in analysis, as well as the source information for presentation in court.

The new facial recognition/mapping software (biometric face matching software) must be able to identify human faces in images and determine if the face in two images belongs to the same person, even from different angles and poor lighting conditions.

In a dramatic effort to improve the skills of crime scene investigators, new three-dimensional (3D) crime scene simulation software must be able to assist in the training and equipping of crime scene examiners by testing or assessing their observation skills and knowledge of crime scene processing. When using the software, the trainee will wear a headset that produces a 3D image, allowing the trainee to virtually walk through the crime scene.

Recognising the importance of technology in combating financial and organized crime, the SAPS is also looking at forensic accounting investigative tools to tackle complex crimes and organised syndicates.

eDiscovery (electronic discovery) is the process of finding, reviewing and collating digital information to be used as evidence in legal procedures. SAPS requires an eDiscovery solution able to convert documents from any format, producing working papers that can perform Computer Assisted Audit Techniques (CAATs) and data analytics. These capabilities should support the analysis of bank statements, trend analysis in financial statements and other financial information.

For financial and asset forfeiture investigations, the document conversion software (OCR) must have a high volume scanning capability, capable of converting paper documents and images into readable digital data formats.

In all cases, comprehensive initial and ongoing training for SAPS personnel must be provided, as well as software and hardware support.

The integration of these advanced tools should enhance the SAPS’s ability to combat financial crimes and improve crime scene forensics and investigations, increasing efficiency and boosting public trust by enabling faster crime resolution and improved prosecution rates.

The post SAPS seeks high tech tools to modernise crime investigations appeared first on ProtectionWeb.

“From the 2025 Medium‐Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) period onwards, funding will be reprioritised within the function to departments and entities to establish a shared forensic capability within the Financial Intelligence Centre,” National Treasury’s document on the 2024 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) said.

This will strengthen efforts to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism and secure South Africa’s removal from the grey list.

Tabling the MTBPS in Parliament on Wednesday, Minister of Finance Enoch Godongwana noted that South Africa recently received a positive review from the FATF.

South Africa is now deemed to have largely addressed 16 of the 22 action items in its Action Plan to exit the grey list.

“This is a remarkable achievement, brought about by the unprecedented cooperation between state departments, as well as with civil society.

“FATF lauded South Africa for improving how it dealt with issues of Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism. This leaves us with only six outstanding action items to be addressed for the last scheduled reporting cycle in February 2025,” the Minister said.

The FATF is the international standard-setting body that oversees global compliance with anti-money laundering rules.

The FATF grey list refers to the FATF’s practice of publicly identifying countries with strategic AML/CFT deficiencies. The FATF maintains two such lists with one being jurisdictions under “increased monitoring” that are actively working with the FATF to address strategic deficiencies in their regimes” and secondly “high-risk jurisdictions subject to a call for action” that are not actively engaging with the FATF to address these deficiencies.

The post Government to establish unit to deal with money laundering appeared first on ProtectionWeb.