SOUTH AFRICA: South Africa removed from FATF increased monitoring list

As published on: step.org, Monday 27 October, 2025.

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has removed South Africa from its list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring for anti-money laundering (AML) deficiencies, having decided the jurisdiction has completed its remedial action plan.

The country was added to the list in February 2023 and immediately began to work on the 22 improvements to its AML regime that FATF had requested.

It made rapid progress and, at the beginning of 2025, FATF announced that the South Africa had addressed 20 out of the 22 items in the action plan. These included signing into law the General Laws (Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Terrorism Financing) Amendment Act 2022, which amended several key pieces of legislation, including the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, the Companies Act and the Trust Property Control Act. It also introduced stricter requirements for companies and trusts to record and report information regarding their beneficial owners, increasing the transparency of asset ownership; and broadened the definition of politically exposed persons, increasing the scope of individuals subject to enhanced due-diligence measures. A further amendment strengthened the legal framework for combating the financing of terrorism and proliferation.

As of February 2025, only two of the FATF demands were still outstanding. First, the requirement to demonstrate a sustained increase in investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering cases, in particular involving professional enablers and third-party risks. The second requirement was to improve effective identification, investigation and prosecution of terrorist financing activities.

In June 2025, FATF announced that South Africa had substantially addressed all 22 action items, due to improved regulatory compliance, stronger supervision and a more effective implementation of beneficial ownership requirements. This qualified South Africa for an immediate on-site assessment by FATF, which took place in July. The report from this assessment was submitted to the October 2025 FATF plenary meeting, with the result that the country has been removed from the list.

In its summary, FATF said the country had ‘demonstrated a sustained increase in outbound [assistance] requests that help facilitate investigations and confiscations; improved risk-based supervision of designated non-financial businesses and professions and demonstrating that all AML supervisors apply effective, proportionate, and effective sanctions for non-compliance; and ensured that 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 [these] obligations’.

South Africa had also demonstrated a sustained increase in law enforcement agencies’ requests for financial intelligence for its AML investigations; increased investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering and terrorist financing; improved its identification, seizure and confiscation of proceeds of crime; updated its terrorism financing risk assessment; and ensured the effective implementation of targeted financial sanctions.

Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Nigeria have also been removed from the FATF list.