South Africa faces crucial FATF inspection to exit financial greylisting

Stephen Grootes speaks to Rebecca Thomson, Partner & Head of Investigations, Compliance & Ethics, Baker McKenzie South Africa about the FATF Africa Joint Group will visit South Africa on July 29 and 30, 2025, to verify progress made in strengthening the country’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing systems.

Listen to the inter view in the audio player below. 

Since being placed on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list in 2023, South Africa has been actively working to address the 22 identified action items.

The FATF Africa Joint Group will carry out an on-site visit on 29 & 30 July to assess South Africa’s progress in addressing the shortcomings in anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing.

Those action items include enhancing the investigation and prosecution of money laundering and terrorist financing, improving access to beneficial ownership information, and strengthening the use of financial intelligence.

The inspection marks a critical step toward South Africa’s potential removal from the grey list, with a final decision anticipated at the FATF Plenary in October 2025.

Speaking to Stephen Grootes on The Money Show, Rebecca Thomson, Partner & Head of Investigations, Compliance & Ethics at Baker McKenzie South Africa says improvements have been made, but South Africa will have to prove that the changes are long-lasting.

"FATF has now found that we are now largely compliant with 20 of those 22 action items. The remaining two items relate to a sustained increase in investigations and prosecutions of serious and complex money laundering."

- Rebecca Thomson, partner & head of investigations, compliance & ethics - Baker McKenzie South Africa

"The remaining two action items are arguably the most demanding, requiring a demonstration of sustained progress. That's what they're coming here to inspect."

- Rebecca Thomson, partner & head of investigations, compliance & ethics - Baker McKenzie South Africa

"It's quite rigorous as I understand it. They'll be meeting with heads from the Hawks, the NPA, the SARB, various financial regulators and big business in South Africa to assess how far we've come on those two items."

- Rebecca Thomson, partner & head of investigations, compliance & ethics - Baker McKenzie South Africa  

Scroll to the top of the article to listen to the full interview.