South Africa is finally off the greylist, but now the real work begins

Since being greylisted, South Africa has made significant progress, including passing new laws and improving enforcement mechanisms to combat financial crimes.

South Africa was greylisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in February 2023 because it was found to have deficiencies in combating money laundering and terrorist financing.

The FATF noted that state capture and high-level corruption had significantly weakened institutions tasked with fighting financial crimes.

Law enforcement agencies, including the Hawks, NPA, and SAPS, were found to be under-resourced and poorly coordinated, leading to weak investigation and prosecution of financial crimes.

But the FATF acknowledged the concerted effort made by regulators, government and the private sector since, such as the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) successfully bringing more money laundering, corruption cases to court.

These and other actions saw the FATF officially remove South Africa from the greylist in October 2025.

Speaking to Stephen Grootes on The Money Show, Ismail Momoniat, official at the National Treasury says remaining off the greylist is going to require strict adherence to the new measures.

"We got there because our institutions were weakened...so we shouldn't be surprised we got greylisted. But having come out of greylisting, we shouldn't also get the wrong message. It's basically saying we've begun to do the things we're supposed to do," said Momoniat.

"The worst thing we can do now is to become complacent. We need to continue to improve. To strengthen...and if we can't demonstrate that we've really continued to improve, we could get back into the greylist," added Momoniat. 

Listen to the interview in the audio player below.