Highlights

• When the global Financial Action Task Force (FATF) places a jurisdiction under increased monitoring (ie the grey list), it means that the country is actively working with the FATF to address apparent strategic deficiencies in its regimes designed to tackle financial crimes.
• In our view, much of the responsibility for the weakening of South Africa’s (SA) criminal justice system lies with the previous administration, during which period, the capacity of SA’s tax authority, intelligence agencies and crime-fighting and law enforcement bodies were eroded.
• SA was given until November 2022 to prove it was remedying the country’s structural deficiencies when it comes to anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism. However, a plenary vote of the FATF members has determined that SA has failed to demonstrate satisfactory progress on these remedial actions, resulting in the country being greylisted on 24 February 2023.