Government to establish unit to deal with money laundering

As part of efforts to exit the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey list, government will establish a shared forensic capability within the Financial Intelligence Centre to strengthen efforts to exit the grey list.

“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.

READ | SA records progress in exiting grey list

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. –SAnews.gov.za